Kingdom Hearts 4
by Skylexia
Summary: After the events of KH3, whatever those may turn out to be, it becomes obvious that the nobody problem has not disappeared. Three OC antagonists, really just for fun, not to be taken seriously.
1. Chapter 1

"Kingdom Hearts 4"

"Kingdom Hearts 4"

**AUTHOR'S NOTES, HIGHLY IMPORTANT BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE DON'T GET IT:**

**This is completely fan-made and is in no way associated with Kingdom Hearts or any of its sequels. Because KH3 doesn't seem to flow within my idea, I had the idea to just skip ahead to KH4 to make my idea all spiffy and stuff. This is -not- the actual storyline for KH4. I don't mean to belittle anyone by repeating myself, but some people are very good at making poor assumptions.**

"**KH3 Secret Ending – Rewind and Replay"**

Now that peace has once again for the most part been restored to the realm of Kingdom Hearts for a third time, everything finally looked for the most part peaceful.

However, not everything is as it appears. As darkness is forever destined to exist, so too do the heartless, and their shells will continue to produce the emotionless shells known as the nobodies.

What nobodies lack in emotion they make up for in logic – or so it was thought before the downfall of the Organization XIII.

--

_Destiny Islands, sunset._

By this time, the children who play on the island have dispersed back to their homes. All who were left now were those not belonging to the island.

Atop the deck contraption to the north of the island stood three figures, all of which were considered not belonging to the island. Two were staring out at the sunset, silhouettes a pitch black, talking excitedly. The third would be the only one who would see their silhouettes, leaning against the side of the rock looking incredibly bored.

--

"_Can a trio succeed where ten more have failed?"_

--

It was obvious that the taller of the two figures staring at the sunset was the one who asked the question, although not actually being able to see their eyes didn't venture much into why the question was asked. Concern, curiosity, any emotion could hold true to the purpose.

--

"_Don't question her."_

--

The other figure silently responded to the first's question. The figure standing by the rock had not yet moved, knowing that the two were talking about the decision she had made. Often questioned it was easier not to react.

The first two looked at each other in concern, and then back at the figure against the rock, sensing something that they weren't sure that she did.

The sun was almost completely gone, leaving a faint glow and eliminating the silhouettes that had previously masked the two figures.

--

"_It's of no concern."_

--

The figure had finally acknowledged that something was amiss on the island, something was coming for them.

--

"_They can't know!"_

--

"_They don't know beyond the fact that something is wrong."_

--

By this time any glow left of the sun was gone. The first two figures could now be seen by the light of the moon, the taller being a male and the slightly shorter being a second female. Neither looked assured by the apparent leader's calmness within this situation, although the situation didn't appear to be going anywhere.

Quite suddenly, the leader's brilliant purple eyes snapped open, causing the first two figures to step back.

From across the deck a fourth figure had appeared keyblade in his hand. Without much hesitation he lunged straight for the chest of the leader figure. However, by the time he had reached it he had stabbed the blade straight through the rock wall, but the leader never appeared to move a muscle, closing her eyes again.

Two other new figures came up behind from the direction of the ladder, and the first two figures looked ready to take on all comers. A clash between the two sides occurred, and after a short and highly dangerous battle, two figures flew off the deck in the direction of the water.

The leader had reopened her eyes the moment she heard the splash. One of her own members had been thrown into the water, and a look of false concern filled her face. Her own specific opponent had just unstuck his keyblade from the rock, but as he took a second lunge at her the same thing happened, and he fell off the deck after missing his hit on her.

--

"_Is she okay?"_

--

The male figure had managed to restrain his own opponent and was now at the leader's side, looking over the deck into the water where the third member was splashing around frantically, not looking happy in the least.

--

"_She'll be fine. Let's get reorganized."_

--


	2. Chapter 2

"So wait, run that by me again."

"We've been over it twice Riku."

"I just... can't believe this could happen to the island. I want to make sure I understand."

The Destiny Islands were currently in slight turmoil. The cause: a giant fire that had engulfed the deck and about half the island itself. At the moment the rest of the children who played on the island were told not to go near the island, but Riku, Sora, and Kairi had different plans.

"Sora, just tell him again." Kairi was becoming slightly annoyed with Riku and Sora, who had been bantering about the same thing for about an hour now. As shocking as it was, the boys were acting stupid.

"Fine... last night, after we all left the island, a giant fight occurred, and somehow that started a fire." Sora was as annoyed with Riku as Kairi was annoyed with them both.

While everyone was in the middle of being annoyed with him, Riku was thinking about causes of the fire.

"Okay, fight broke out. Who was fighting, why, where are they and how did they manage to start the fire?"

"You're asking the wrong person. The real question is, does it have something to do with the heartless?"

"I don't think so." Kairi broke in, "There aren't many heartless who breathe fire. Even if there were, they don't usually show up here, and the islands weren't engulfed with darkness. Your keyblades didn't even act up."

Now Kairi was annoying both Riku and Sora. Since they had explained all the details that Kairi wasn't always aware of, Kairi had become better at thinking logically than either of them. Kairi was cool, but she wasn't on the front lines against the heartless at all times.

"It had to be something not from here though... nobodies?" Riku highly doubted it, but as long as heartless existed it was safe to assume that they did too.

"Fighting among nobodies? As much as they've proved that it's possible, you'd think they'd be a little smarter were they to try again." Kairi was now pacing and thinking at the same time.

"I think," Sora started, took a pause, and continued "that we need to call in someone who might know what's going on."

"I'll call King Mickey..." Riku sighed and went off on his own.

"I dunno Sora, this seems a little suspicious." Kairi had finally hit a roadblock in thinking.

"I know, we'll figure it out Kairi, I promise."

--

Unbeknownst to Sora, Riku and Kairi, on the other side of the island three heavily singed people were sitting and resting as a part of the aftermath from last night's fight.

The first one to show any sign of life was a black haired male. He looked like he hadn't received quite as much damage as the other two, but was still in rough shape. His purple eyes spun in circles for several minutes before properly regaining himself.

It took him awhile for the events from the previous night to come back to him. Realizing what had happened; he ran to the nearest member of his party and shook them awake.

"Mirra! Mirra wake up!" he shook the female figure until her eyes opened, blinking at him in confusion.

"Damayon...?"

"Oh thank god!" Damayon exclaimed before running to the other member of the party, dropping Mirra back on the ground in his hyper panic.

"Ouch Damayon..."

"Ray! RAY!" He repeated the procedure, shaking the male figure a little harder however. "RAYY!!"

Ray's eyes eventually opened, changing from icy blue to red to icy blue again before being functional enough to respond to being shaken so suddenly.

"Damayon... put me down... you're killing my burns..."

"Oh sorry!" Damayon dropped Ray in the same fashion that he had dropped Mirra, causing Mirra to roll her eyes.

"Hey Damayon, calm down would you?" Her attention was turned by the sound of someone coming around the un-barbequed side of the island. "See, now look what you've done."

Around the corner came Riku, who had been distracted from the task he had set out to do by the sounds of someone incessantly yelling. His suspicions were confirmed upon seeing the three people standing there, clearly from their appearance they had been involved in the fire.

"And who are you three? Is this your doing?" Riku's tone was serious. He didn't summon his keyblade, afraid it could provoke them, but if they proved to be dangerous it wouldn't take long.

"Err..." Mirra, being the closest, wanted to respond, but seeing as Damayon was the leader it should be his job... "Just... give Damayon there a moment to recover. He's a little hysterical, but he can explain better than I can..."

Ray was now trying to get Damayon to stop hanging off him. Seeing that he wasn't going to return to normal anytime soon, he decided to take charge.

"I apologize for his behaviour, we took a bit of a blow last night... while we were involved in the fire incident, we did not start it. It was more like we were the targets for it."

Sora and Kairi ran up behind Riku, taking caution of the unfamiliar people, but were just in time to hear that they didn't appear to be the ones that they needed to worry about.

"And who on earth had enough power to cause this disaster then?" Riku continued to do the talking for his trio, although Sora looked like he wanted to take over the interrogation.

"We're... not entirely sure ourselves. But they took our world, so we're working to bring them to justice." While Ray continued talking, Damayon had a hold of himself enough to nod along with Ray, and Mirra had gotten herself up to stand with the two of them, taking Damayon from Ray and letting him hang on her.

"Heartless?" Sora asked Riku in a low voice.

"I don't know..." Riku responded in the same low voice.

"Where did they go?" Kairi hated when the boys went and tried to think things through without all the facts, but her question caused both Riku and Sora to stare at her again.

"We wish we knew. They disappeared after the fight; just as they do every other time we've managed to track them down. You're lucky for now, but they'll be back." Ray sighed and looked at Damayon, whom Mirra was now also becoming annoyed with.

"Our apologies, I don't feel that we're in enough shape to stay and make another attempt to stop them. Every other time they've failed, they've returned the next night to gain success."

"That's fine; we can deal with them when they come back then." Sora smiled, keen on getting rid of heartless threats, not that there was any proof to prove that it was in fact a heartless.

Kairi however, was shaking her head again.

"Think with your brain Sora." She turned to the other group "Is it possible for you to give us details as to what we're up against?"

"Not a problem at all." Ray's group sat on the ground, Damayon just not on the condition to stay standing and Mirra not in the condition to continue to hold him up. Sora's group went and sat facing them, keen on hearing about this new threat.

"Once again, we're not sure what they are. None of us have previous experience in... heartless matters I suppose. Mirra's been researching, but with all the chasing we've been doing we haven't gotten very far with it.

"What we do know is that they appear to hold some strange powers. One is a pyro, obviously. Another seems to be a botanist. The third, their leader, her power... I have no idea what she did, but she never appears to move and yet we can't strike her..."

"Space?" Kairi suggested, thinking about what on earth it could possibly be.

"Possibly..." Riku acknowledged "What are their personalities like?"

"Uncaring. Unmoving. Even when they seem to try to be sarcastic is comes out somewhat bland."

"Nobodies..."

"Not again..."

"Excuse us." Ray looked down at Damayon. Their so called leader had fallen asleep on top of Mirra. "I believe we must take our leave."

"Thank you for your help." Riku stood up and held his hand out to Ray, who also stood up and shook it.

"Should you need any help in the future," Ray paused to pick Damayon up off Mirra "I'm sure that our paths will cross again." He dragged his sleeping friend off towards the un-burnt side of the island, Mirra following closely behind.

--

"So what are we dealing with?" Sora asked Riku after they had returned to the mainland to prepare for the night.

"Why are you asking me, when you're supposedly our leader?"

"Oh sorry, I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be leading when you were asking all the questions."

"I was compensating for the fact that you were slow."

"Stop it both of you!" Kairi spun ahead of them to glare at them, "We're in danger, and all either of you can do is fight. I know none of us want to deal with the darkness and the heartless and nobodies again, but we have no choice. Now both of you stop and make plans."

Both Riku and Sora stopped to stare at Kairi's outburst.

"We're sorry Kairi, you're right." Sora sighed and gave Riku an apologetic hug, which annoyed Riku slightly. "We'll meet at sundown, okay Riku?"

Riku nodded and went his own way.

--

Riku had to admit, he was having a hard time adjusting to life back on the island. To having Sora and Kairi as friends again. He had spent so long in the darkness that he had become slightly anti-social.

It seemed that ever since he had gotten back he and Sora had been out of tune with each other. They used to know what the other was thinking. They took the teasing in a joking matter. Lately however... that kind of changed. There was a lot of tension, and they weren't teasing each other very much if at all. And as their recent behaviour showed, they were fighting a lot. And if Kairi weren't there he wouldn't be surprised at all if he and Sora just stopped talking.

He had convinced himself that it would just take time. It hadn't actually been that long; no one could have recovered from years in the darkness within the amount of time that had passed. The adjustment period wasn't smooth, but he was getting the hang of it he supposed.

He would need to get the hang of it, if Sora and he were to get along to fix this new problem...

--

Sora was having a bit of the same problem adjusting back to normal life. After awhile fighting habits stuck. How many times had he accidentally hurt Riku in a fake battle?

Besides that, he had spent so much time searching for Riku that he had actually forgotten how to deal with him. He was always so egotistical, so weirdly strong willed and it was like... very hard to deal with at times...

Kairi seemed to take the tension between the two of them hardest. It was getting better, but it was painful to watch her two friends who had been so close begin to drift a bit...

--

At sundown the three of them met at the mainland dock. Looking out on the ocean towards the island, they could already see the tiny silhouettes of three figures standing out on the island.

"Won't this be interesting?"


	3. Chapter 3

"I don't see anything, do you?"

Sora's group had finally arrived on the island. The trip had been smooth, but now that they were here they had no idea what they were looking for.

"Are we looking for black hooded figures still?" Kairi asked.

"You know, that's hard to say... I don't know if they're still in the Organization format or not..." Sora had elected to wander over to the burnt part of the island to see if they would return to right there. Riku shook his head and went off towards the island with the bent tree, already known for being a place of centered darkness, leaving Kairi to do whatever.

"You two are so annoying today..." she sighed before following Riku, who seemed to be the more logical choice to follow at the moment, as the odds of them being on the burnt side of the island again were slim.

--

After a long search, nothing was found.

Sora, Kairi and Riku had given up, lying down on the beach looking up at the stars. It didn't even look like a thunderstorm was coming, which used to be the case with darkness coming.

"So what happened?" Kairi asked, "I thought they said that they would come tonight?"

"Unless they found out that we know, and are playing it cautious. Maybe Damayon's group presents no threat to them, but somehow we do."

"Yea, keyblade wielders must be some danger to their kind." Sora smirked.

"I'm pretty amazed that they were able to assess that though. You think they have a connection to the Organization XIII?" Riku looked over at what he thought was a sound coming from the other side of the island. "Shhhh..."

Sora and Kairi silently jumped up as soon as they heard the same sound that Riku had.

"Lookit." Riku whispered, pointing out to sea. The horizon was becoming quite dark and cloudy. "They delayed it, knowing we were coming. I don't think they know we're here."

"Where are they then?" Sora looked in the direction that the sound appeared to come from.

"Other side of the island?" Kairi suggested. "Sora, I'm scared!"

"Riku..." Sora sighed, now having Kairi clinging to his arm, "Would you please lead for Kairi's sake?"

"For Kairi, sure." Riku tiptoed around the island, having Sora and Kairi follow him closely until they reached the other side of the island.

--

Sitting on the other side of the island were two figures, although clearly not the black hooded ones that Sora's group were expecting to see.

These two figures were talking, not exactly quietly however, clearly not aware of anyone else being on the island.

"So everything is set this time?"

"Well, that's my understanding at least... Sky went off somewhere to check. Those ones who have been chasing us are definitely not around; however, the keyblade wielders of this world are still around."

"I thought the point of coming here so late was to make the keyblade wielders go home?"

Riku himself was now close enough to make out the figures of a male and a female. The male was heavily concerned with what was going on, although the female seemed to be the one who knew what was going on... Both were facing away, so neither noticed him.

"Having fun?" A voice came from right behind Riku, causing all three of them to jump with surprise and fall.

"HOLY CRAP!" Sora was in a slight state of shock, Kairi was practically having a heart attack. Riku was in so much shock that he couldn't speak. The person had appeared without a sound.

By this time the two figures who had been talking below had taken notice. Both Riku and Sora had their keyblades out in an instant.

"Hey, what's your problem?" The person who had scared them to death spoke.

"We know that you're planning to bring darkness."

"Darn. Elexi, Kisatrix, I though I told you guys not to speak so loudly until I had found them." She was clearly the leader for the three.

"Sorry Sky." Kisatrix sighed. "He kept asking questions."

"It's not my fault! Skyla, you didn't tell me anything before you left. I am entitled to ask questions."

"Skyla?" Riku repeated. "There's no x in your name"

"Oh, there is. My name is Skylexia. Could you imagine calling a name like that every time you wanted to talk to Sora, or Kairi?"

"So... you'd prefer being referred to as Skyla?"

"Shouldn't matter to you, after tonight you'll never see us again." A smile spread across her face, "Unless, of course, you'd like to attempt to stop us."

Her two friends smiled, assuming much more casual positioning.

Sora was also smiling.

"You asked for it." Sora went straight for Elexi with his keyblade, slashing it hard. However, his plans were sidetracked when Elexi deflected it with a vine whip that he had taken out in an instant.

Riku, deciding that because the leader's powers were likely over space still, turned around and went after Kisatrix. In a similar fashion to Elexi, she had taken out her own sword weapon and deflected the blow.

Skylexia, seeing that Kairi was clearly not a person who was made for fighting, stayed back to watch and give assistance to her own side if needed.

Sora was having quite a difficult time with Elexi. His whip was made for keeping enemies at a distance, but having experience in fighting his own friend Selphie it didn't take that long for a blow to the stomach to send Elexi flying into the water.

Riku was having just as much trouble with his opponent. So far she was only defending, but defending so well that he quite nearly fell into her blade on his own accord. While he was distracted by avoiding her sword, she ducked under and punched him hard in the stomach, causing him to fly backwards.

In that instant Sora had attacked Kisatrix himself, but before he even got close she blew a stream of fire at him. While it wasn't damaging it did cause him to be blown backwards a bit.

By this time Elexi had gotten out of the water.

"Skyla! Damnit, can't we have one fight where we're not flying into the water?" He complained as he dried his glasses off with his sleeve and put them back on. "You don't even fly into the water, you're all like 'ooooh, I'm Skylexia. I have a really cool name and special powers so when I fight I don't even need to take out my weapon because people go flying into the water, and then Elexi and Kisatrix go flying into the water but I don't care because I'm soooooo cool.'"

Skyla shook her head at him. "What do you propose; I attack a completely defenseless little girl?" She motioned at Kairi "I'm a nobody, not a heartless."

Kairi spun to look at Skyla with resentment.

"I am NOT defenseless!"

"You have a keyblade? Organization records state that you were quite easily taken by one Axel. I'd hate to be unfair you know."

"Oh yea? Bring it on!" Kairi prepared herself for a fist fight, but Skyla just shook her head.

"Fine, first to get knocked into the water loses." Skyla prepared herself in the same matter, covering her eyes with her large red bangs, "I, however, must insist that you make the first move, as if I do you won't get a chance to make a move."

Kairi growled slightly and went in to attack, however, the moment she got close something happened that redirected the direction she was running slightly, allowing Skyla to catch her fist and push her back, with a more powerful version of what she had done to redirect her, making her fly back and hit the water.

"See Skyla? No weapons, oooohh I'm so cool." Elexi was still in the middle of mocking her.

"Shut up Elexi; be hyper when we get back." Kisatrix was becoming ever so slightly annoyed with the mocking.

Right after Kairi hit the water, Sora and Riku were right on attacking Skyla with their keyblades, at which point they both somehow ran past her.

"Why do you keep doing that?" Sora was annoyed that there was pretty much no way to hit her.

"Stalling." Skyla pointed at the sky, which was now as black as a thunderstorm. "Think you can stop the darkness again?"

Riku and Sora looked up quickly, and then at each other, before running off back to the front of the island.

"Elexi, Kisatrix, just go make sure that they don't stop the darkness. I'm going to help their friend out of the water."

"Can I send you flying into the water? Pleeassseee?" Elexi asked excitedly.

"I'll let you send me flying into the water later Elexi, I promise."

Elexi pouted, looking forward to taking their self-proclaimed 'omnipotent' leader and knocking her into the water. But, he would get to later, so he supposed that was good enough as he dragged Kisatrix to the front of the island with him. Kisatrix did not look happy again, she was often dragged everywhere for no reason.

Skyla just shook her head, going out to the water and dragging Kairi out of it. She had made a slight miscalculation in the force she used, not thinking that Kairi was as light as she was had sent her flying a little further than she had originally been anticipating. She had an idea anyway.

--

On the island with the bent tree, the normal cyclonic dark cloud was looming over the island, and Sora and Riku didn't know what to do about it.

"Hey, Riku, no falling into the darkness on me again." Sora smirked.

"Oh shut up, I'm not insane." Riku sighed. So the doors to other worlds had been opened once again. How were those nobodies able to do this, he wondered to himself. They didn't appear to control the heartless themselves, what instigated the darkness?

No sooner had Riku thought about heartless than about half a hundred heartless appeared surrounding them, and suddenly the fact that Elexi and Kisatrix were sitting on the main island near the seaside shack wasn't the most threatening thing ever.

Riku and Sora give a little sigh each and went at eliminating the heartless that had appeared. More showed up, but they wound up stopping after they had eliminated about the original amount that showed up.

"What, Sora?"

"Don't you remember? Every heartless we kill has the potential to help those nobodies with their quest."

"I guess you're right, but we do need to fix this."

Sora sighed, and gave the nod to continue trying to subdue the massive amounts of heartless that had further appeared. Eventually their numbers dwindled and the last one finally disappeared from the wrath of Sora's keyblade.

As that happened, Skyla appeared with Kairi at her side. Kairi looked scared, and Skyla was a little annoyed looking.

"I truly don't like you guys." Skyla sighed, "And for that, well, I'm going to make a proposition for you."

Sora and Riku backed off to listen. They hadn't seen Skyla's weapon yet, and feared for Kairi's safety.

"We're listening..."

"You let the darkness take its course, Kairi goes with you onto the world you get thrown into."

"And if we continue fighting?"

'I don't believe in kidnapping, it's not as fun as watching two separate parties struggle, if you understand what I mean." Skyla was having a little fun at their expense.

Sora couldn't lose Kairi again; Kairi was what kept he and Riku on the same page. If they got separated while fighting the darkness he and Riku were liable to turn on each other, and that wouldn't be productive.

Riku on the other hand couldn't stand the thought of just giving up the island without a valid fight for its safety. While Kairi was important to him, it was hard to choose when you wanted to atone for the sins of the past.

After a short period of time, a new idea came to Riku.

"If Sora gave up, but I kept fighting what would happen?"

Skyla's reaction to the question took a moment, trying to place where Riku's interests laid. There had to be some advantage for him to gain from asking such a question. Sora was staring at Riku like he was crazy, although he was happy that Riku knew him well enough to know what his choice would be.

"Hmmm... I would have to say if only one of you kept fighting, first you would be unsuccessful. Next, I would let Kairi go with Sora, and as for you..."

Elexi raised his hand and jumped up and down, interrupting Skyla's thinking process.

"I wanna knock him into the water Skyla! Please? Please can I knock him into the water?"

"That would involve kidnapping him Elexi..." Skyla thought further for a couple minutes, "Fine, we'll temporarily take you with us until we figure out what to do with you, and we'll let Elexi knock you into the water."

"YYYYAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY!!" Elexi squealed in delight.

Riku turned to Sora, a look of apology on his face.

"Give up your fight, take Kairi, I'll catch up. I won't betray your trust, this I promise."

Sora sighed and nodded in agreement.

"That's fine. I give up the fight." He walked towards them and took Kairi from Skyla, who was clearly still a little dismayed at the decision she had just made.

She wasn't so much concerned with Riku's ability to stop the heartless who had now re-swarmed him, or the darkside that would soon come to attack, but more what they were going to do with him after Elexi had gotten bored with repeatedly pushing him into the water.

--

It was actually some time before Riku had finally failed at stopping the darkness. Elexi had fallen backwards and was now asleep out of boredom, and Kisatrix was looking at the sky, wondering if it would be daytime if the darkness weren't there...

Skyla, Sora and Kairi had been intently watching Riku's battle with the darkside. It was a problem for him. Sora wanted to jump in there and help him, but knew it was pointless. He wasn't sure if he could trust Skyla's word, although so far she hadn't attacked them while standing right next to him.

Now that he noticed how close he was to her, he wondered if her spatial powers worked in such close range. It seemed she needed distance for her to redirect an attack...

"By all means, try Sora, but you'll end up awful wet and hurt." Skyla responded bluntly to what she knew Sora was thinking. Her eyes never even drifted from what Riku was doing, the only reason she hadn't stepped in to speed the process was because it was fun to watch.

Sora just sighed and went back to watching his best friend getting slowly beat down by the darkness.

Not long after, darkness started flooding over the ground of the island. Riku watched it come at him in disappointment.

"Hey, at least you tried." Skyla had magically appeared behind him again. "You ready to go?"

Riku looked back at where Sora and Kairi had been standing. The darkness had already covered the area, if the new nobodies didn't take them away then the darkness had sent them elsewhere.

He sighed and looked down at Skyla. The way she usually was you'd swear she was taller than everyone else, but she was actually quite shorter.

He didn't know if he spaced out or what, but he lost all control and his vision blurred to the side.

"Sorry Riku, can't let you answer because I think we're out of time."


	4. Chapter 4

"Argh, where are we?"

Sora's eyes opened to a bright blue sky. Definitely daytime, but definitely not on the island he was so used to. Looking over he saw that Kairi was also awake, which was a relief.

Kairi somehow was the first to get herself up off the ground to look around. She didn't recognize the setting they had been teleported to, but the moment Sora regained his vertical base it was quite clear from the way he cheered.

"THE CASTLE THE CASTLE!" He jumped up and down, much to Kairi's horror. Off he ran into the castle and towards the throne room.

"KING MICKEY!" He burst into the room, only to see Goofy, Donald and Queen Minnie surrounding Pluto their dog. The king was nowhere to be found.

"So he's gone again?" Kairi walked in calmly behind Sora, who was frozen in shock after bursting into a room without the person he was looking for.

"Yes, he is. Sora, can you help us again please?" Queen Mickey looked awful sad. Every time she saw the wonderful Sora her beloved Mickey had gone and disappeared.

"Well of course I can help." Sora straightened himself out, only to be tackled by Donald and Goofy shortly after. They were so happy to see him.

"Sora!"

"Sora we missed you!"

"Hey guys, I missed you too!" Sora laughed.

"Can they come with us then?" Kairi asked the queen.

"I don't see why not. But if that's the case, you guys should go down and check Timeless River to make sure it's secure before going off." Queen Minnie looked down the long walk to the throne, clearly concerned.

"Is Maleficent a problem again?"

"Not that I'm aware of, but I'd like to be safe, especially if you're going to be dragging Donald and Goofy away again."

Sora, Donald and Goofy saluted the Queen and ran off down the hall towards the throne. Kairi could tell right off that keeping up with them was going to become quite the challenge; she already knew Sora didn't tire easily but now he had a purpose to put to the energy.

--

Sora's new quartet group burst into Timeless River, the familiar old time music playing and making the black and white scene seem like it had colour.

It was, however, more like three of them burst in to start looking around. Kairi was a little less enthusiastic. She was nervous about traveling from world to world stopping the heartless. She wasn't much of a fighter and over the course of the last couple of Sora's adventures she had managed to sleep through one and forget a large portion of another... it was such an odd idea that she would actually get to be a part of one of these fabled adventures both Sora and Riku got to take part in.

Instantly the cartoon-ized versions of the four figures from the future were running this way and that, looking for heartless that may be lose that would cause problems for the castle in the future. Eventually they got themselves together, and decided to discuss what was going on.

"So you never told us, Sora," Goofy started after everyone was calmed down, "What are we up against this time?"

"Yea Sora! How can we look for something if we don't even know what we're up against?"

"And where's Riku?"

"Slow down slow down!" Sora stopped them before they asked anymore weird questions. "We're up against some more crazy nobodies, and they temporarily have Riku." Sora sighed, he felt bad for letting them take Riku without a fight.

In retrospect, those nobodies they were up against were awful passive aggressive. Their leader could've ended their quest right there on the island should she wish it, but for some reason she didn't...

Just then it hit him again. None of the new nobodies had keyblades. They knew that Riku wasn't going to give it up and that Riku was more likely to give into rage to kill the heartless than he would.

"This isn't a good situation." He summed up quickly, "We need to get through the worlds and find Riku as fast as possible."

Everyone nodded in agreement.

--

The quartet eventually left Timeless River, going back to the Disney Castle to report to Queen Minnie. They had managed to determine that there was absolutely no other door that could cause threat to the Disney Castle thus far.

"Say, Queen Minnie..." Sora questioned quickly before heading with the rest of his party to see Chip and Dale, "Why didn't you remove the doorway downstairs to the Timeless River after King Mickey returned?"

"Mickey suggested leaving it there for quick access should there be an emergency. Who knows who can go and bother to break into the past?"

"Good point. Well, I believe we'll be off Queen Minnie" He bowed in respect for her, as did Donald and Goofy. Kairi took a moment to catch onto what was happening, but bowed none the less.

"Please tell Daisy I'm sorry, Your Majesty." Donald spoke in his really crazy voice.

"I think she'll understand, so long as you're not away as long. Please, all of you be careful."

"Yes ma'am!" Sora was running as he yelled it back at her, clearly eager to get this new quest on and over with. The other three quickly chased him down in the Gummi Hangar.

--

Chip and Dale were all super excited, as super excited as a chipmunk could be.

"We hope you're ready, Sora!" Chip squeaked as he made the arrangements for their Gummi Ship.

"There's already a new town on the radar that we've never seen before. I think it will be different." Dale was making sure the levers were set properly as the Gummi Ship that they would be using came up out of the ground. It was a normal type Gummi, the usual one they started with. It was slightly larger though, so it could accommodate up to five passengers, should they happen to run into Riku.

The four of them got into the Gummi Ship and prepared for launch.

"All systems go!" Chip squealed.

"Have fun Sora! 3! 2! 1!" Dale set the launcher and before Sora and his party knew it they were flying between the different worlds that made up the sky.

"One sky, one destiny..." Kairi spoke softly.

Sora couldn't help but to be thinking of Riku however.

"I wonder how he's doing..."


	5. Chapter 5

"Elexi, you are really starting to get on my nerves."

"You promised me Skyla! You promised!"

"I promised once, now look at me."

Skyla and Elexi were in a bit of a fight at the moment. As soon as they had gotten back to the World That Never Was, Elexi had made a rather large swimming pool and had been pushing Skyla into it ever since. Whenever Skyla attempted to outsmart him by just staying in the water, Elexi would simply lift her out with his vines and push her into the water again.

She wasn't entirely pleased with Elexi's behaviour. She liked him enough to not blow him up with atomic spatial differences, but if he didn't stop soon she was going to lose her mind.

What shocked Riku about this string of events that was occurring here was that he was seeing them.

What had happened after his vision blurred was simple. Skyla had made him disappear and he had awoken five minutes later here. They hadn't locked him in a room, or chained him up or anything. He was just... sitting there, observing the events between Elexi and Skyla in the corner of the room with Kisatrix.

Kisatrix had told him he could wander around should he wish to. He assumed that everything was secure and they were just sure he wouldn't be able to do anything like escape. That, or Skyla's powers were strong enough that she was able to tell what he was up to at most times.

He had opted out of wandering around the castle. Watching Skyla and Elexi was pretty funny.

It also helped with observing what they were like. They seemed hyper, and full of life. Unlike the nobodies they had previously dealt with, half of which always seemed dead or depressed. What made them so happy?

Now that there was light in the area he could finally see what exactly they looked like too.

Skyla was short, shorter than him and just barely shorter than Kisatrix. She was the only one who he had never seen use a void portal that most nobodies used to get around. Her space powers were highly advanced, she could see at all times what was going on and she could tear and walk through space to appear places. Her hair seemed rather misplaced, her bangs being the bright red, but the rest of her hair being an almost black colour halfway down her back. Her outfit reflected her hair, having a bright red long shirt cutting off just above the knee and then the normal black sweatpants that was normally associated with the Organization.

He still was unsure of what her weapon was however. She didn't appear to carry it, but none of the three of them appeared to carry them. He didn't know his place here yet, so he wasn't sure if it would be weird to ask...

Especially not Elexi. Wearing his argyle shirt he didn't look as hyper as he acted. He was an odd fellow for sure, one of his eyes was the gorgeous blue colour that was mimicked only in his summoned roses, which he had managed to cover an entire wall with... the other eye was a pink colour, much like a pink daffodil or something... just looking at him made you think of flowers. He also wore a scarf, although it wasn't cold here, which again mimicked the colour of his roses. His glasses were square. He looked more like someone who ran around fixing computers than a florist type.

The only one who seemed remotely normal was Kisatrix. Her hair was shoulder length brown with some random highlights here and there; she wore a normal t-shirt and jeans. She was quiet and distant and her eyes were inner ring brown and outer ring green. While her comrades were fighting in the swimming pool she had opted to sit next to Riku, maybe feeling that he was the most normal.

"ELEXI I'VE HAD IT!" Skyla lost her temper, appearing behind him in a slight rage causing him to duck and cover his head, "GO PLAY WITH RIKU!" And with that she disappeared.

"Oh you're screwed now my friend." Kisatrix said blandly as she got up to leave.

--

It seemed like hours later before Elexi got bored with Riku. How many times he had gotten pushed into the water he had no idea, but the fact that Elexi then proceeded to do his hair was excruciatingly painful.

Fortunately, he had given up after he had one side up in a flowery array, leaving the other side to sit long.

Skyla came by not long afterwards, laughing a bit and sitting down next to him on the ledge of the roof.

"What's on your mind?" She asked lightly, seemingly in a much better mood than she was earlier, "Sorry for sending Elexi on you like that, you found out first hand why it's annoying."

"You guys are awful carefree for a group of nobodies chasing Kingdom Hearts."

"I told you, I don't believe in kidnapping. You're free to try and leave whenever; I just don't think you'll make it far. Betwixt and Between is closed now, you couldn't even get to Twilight Town. As soon as things settle down with your friends I'll probably drop you with them." She was staring up at Kingdom Hearts the whole time. It was a miracle that it even existed anymore with how much fighting was over it.

"You're a curious mind. Ask me anything." She smiled warmly. It was odd that a nobody could seem so full of life.


	6. Chapter 6

"The chipmunks were right, this is a weird world."

Sora and his friends had wound up in a strange new world, just like Chip and Dale had told them they would. Its sky was red, but its sun was blue. It looked like they had stepped into a computer whose coloured circuits had been fried.

"It is odd, isn't it?" A familiar voice came from behind him, nearly causing Sora to jump and freak out again. He was so tired of people sneaking up behind him.

Turning around he saw his good friend Aerith, who was normally in Radiant Gardens. Instantly he assumed that the darkness had taken it and turned it back into Hollow Bastion on them.

Kairi was the first to speak, Sora having too many assumptions of darkness going through his head.

"Hey, how are you?"

"Not bad, we left the Radiant Gardens, afraid that it would cause some problems. Stars were going out in the sky again, Leon was worried and insisted Cid build a Gummi Ship to move us here."

"But where are we?" Sora asked in confusion, looking up once again at the blue sun that somehow made the sky red.

"Oh, this is Midnight's Light. A world opposing Twilight Town, I'm not sure why it's called that… This is the only place other than Twilight Town and Radiant Gardens that has yet to develop another heartless problem, at least that we know of." Aerith was also staring at the sky, "It messes your eyes up doesn't it?"

"Yea, just a bit." Kairi winced from staring up at the sun too long.

"So where are Leon and the rest of them?"

"I'm not sure at the moment..." Aerith admitted, thinking hard. "They may have gone up to the castle. While there's no heartless there's an awfully mean king type figure who rules this place. We've been trying to convince him that this world is in danger of falling into the darkness. However, he won't listen to us. Apparently this world is either made of a semi-dark aura, or, it has never been touched by the darkness."

Sora sighed and shook his head.

"That doesn't help at the moment. While we'd love to help you we need a lead on this darkness first."

"We're going to head to the next world?" Kairi asked, curious that Sora would give up an opportunity to help his good friends.

"That's fine. We're in no real danger at the moment anyway." Aerith sighed to herself. "Hey, you be careful. We'll have Merlin call you if anything happens here."

"Sure thing! Come on guys!" Sora ran off in the direction of where the Gummi Ship was parked.

"I'll tell Leon you stopped by."

--

"Okay, so explain to me this plan of yours."

It had taken awhile for Riku to think of what he actually wanted to ask Skylexia, not knowing how many questions it would take to annoy her he had to prioritize them in order to get the more relevant ones answered.

"Come now Riku, you know very well what the plan is." Skyla smirked.

"So you guys are still the Organization?"

"No, we're called the Reorganization. I feel that directly associating ourselves with the old Organization XIII would be not only degrading for us, but would likely stifle our success. Plus, those cloaks are 'absolutely horrendous', or so Elexi says" She made a little laugh sound, but regained herself quickly.

Riku was starting to understand. These nobodies had either been existent during the Organization uprising or they had properly done their research into the mistakes that Xemnas had already made.

"Why is Elexi like that?" Riku was heavily curious on that. Nobodies were said to not have emotions, and yet, Elexi seemed so hyper and happy that it was like he had a heart.

"That's... a little difficult to explain..." Skyla sighed, and folded her hands in front of her face, leaning forward with her eyes closed. She had absolutely no idea how to explain it to someone who had a heart, like Riku, because they had never known what it was like.

"Nobodies, instead of living off instinct, live off the mistakes of the past. When the heart separates from its shell, the memories stay attached to the shell for some reason, while the raw emotion turns into darkness... do you understand so far?"

Riku was trying to comprehend it, but it just wasn't coming to him. Skyla sighed again.

"Let's pretend for a moment that nobodies are light, even though they're simply nothing, okay?"

"Okay." Riku nodded.

"Basically, the way you function in normal human form is the balance. Your raw emotions and instincts, bad habits and those evil thoughts you just can't avoid, they're the dark side that turns into the heartless. However, your normal memories and logical thinking skills are the light that turn into the nobodies. Does that make a little more sense?"

Riku nodded again, that explained a lot.

"Okay, so basically, nobodies go off of their memories. How they acted previously, how they wanted to act in their own minds. We don't have the emotional attachment to our personalities, so we can be however we want to be.

"The reason the original Organization XIII didn't succeed at this was basically because they were in too much of a hurry. That was their true downfall, they panicked. The void in their chest that didn't allow them to feel bothered them, and they were sloppy."

Riku stared at her. If there was a void in their chests why didn't it bother them like it did the other nobodies?

"The reason it doesn't bother us..." Skyla answered Riku's question, even though he hadn't actually said it, "is because we know that with the right approach we can eventually succeed in our mission and become whole again. There's nothing better to do, so why not make sure we do it right?"

Skyla blinked for a moment, trying to remember why she was talking about this with him in the first place.

"Oh yea, Elexi's personality... well, he's slightly different from Kisatrix and myself. He had an incredibly dark past, which he disliked. He even has nightmares he often complains about, although he won't give details as to what they're about. In order to combat the past he decided to go crazy now, drowning out the memories even though he's probably the most in tune with them. I don't blame him, if I had had a dark past I'd be trying to forget too."

"Your past was full of light?" Riku could perhaps find out where Skyla came from, which could be useful.

"No. I lived in a place made of midnight. It was dark alright, but not in the same way that Elexi's past was. I was a scientist and physicist if you will. Although truly my interest lied further into behavior patterns. I'm kind of studying both now that I have nothing to do. If you really want to hear Elexi's story you'd have more luck asking him yourself." Skyla stood up and straightened out her shirt.

"Was your world taken by the darkness?"

"No, actually, it wasn't. One day I ripped a hole in space, sucking up my lab. I ended up in a place called Traverse Town, where I fought with the heartless and lost." She sighed and walked away from him without a further word.

Skyla's past, while it wasn't bad, wasn't fun to think about. Physics was not her main area of interest, and she resented the ruler of her world for taking her intelligence and using it for his own ends.

If she ever got the chance, she wouldn't hesitate to send as much darkness to her own world as was possible.

--

Kisatrix was now wandering around the castle aimlessly. If there was one person whose past was more of a mystery than Elexi's, it was hers. Her story was something she refused to talk about.

Leaving through a void portal, she went to visit some old friends of hers.


	7. Chapter 7

"Where are we now?"

Kairi walked ahead of Sora and his friends. Sora was a little space sick from riding in the Gummi Ship, however, Kairi had gotten used to it.

"We're in the Coliseum, Sora!" Donald said excitedly, "Now we can prove that we're full fledged heroes!"

By this time the Coliseum had been completely rebuilt by Hercules and his friends, which was a good sign. What wasn't a good sign was Meg standing outside the doors to the main building, apparently waiting for them.

"I knew you'd show up not long after the heartless did." She spoke coolly as they approached, "Wonder boy's been busy with them, and not only that but Hades is being weird again. Care to help?"

"You don't waste time do you?" Kairi teased a bit. It was more exciting now that she was traveling with Sora. "Sorry, that was a little out of place wasn't it?"

Sora's head was still quite groggy, he wasn't looking much better than Hercules did when the Coliseum had gotten destroyed by the Hydra.

"Is he alright?" Meg asked in concern. Now that she mentioned it, Donald and Goofy weren't so sure of his wellness either...

"Sora?" Donald asked, "Sora, are you alright? Snap out of it!"

"Yep. He's out of it." Goofy confirmed after shaking his shoulders lightly.

"That's weird..." Kairi commented quietly, it wasn't like him to be so drained. He was just full of energy when they left the last town; she couldn't believe that just flying a Gummi Ship took this much out of him.

"I bet I know what it is."

The three of them looked up at Meg to listen, as Sora officially collapsed onto of Goofy.

--

"I'm really sorry."

Riku couldn't believe he was apologizing. Especially to Skyla. After she had left before he felt a little guilty. She hadn't done anything other than separate him from his friends to harm him. Since it was clear that even though nobodies couldn't feel, but their memories could bother them to an extent, maybe he shouldn't have brought up what he did. She probably didn't deserve to be reminded of whatever past she had.

Skyla turned from what she was reading to stare at him a moment. Apparently she wasn't expecting him to apologize either. Or an apology wasn't really required.

"That's okay..." she said cautiously "It's just, some pasts are just best not remembered..." she sighed and shut her book, placing it back on the shelf.

She got up and took the roses out of his hair, which he himself had forgotten to do.

"You look ridiculous like that." She stated blandly. Riku was a little concerned about that, usually her voice was riddled with false personality. It would appear as though she kind of cared though. "I'll take you back to your friends in a little bit, after they finish what they're doing at the Coliseum."

Riku thought for a moment. Sure, going back to his friends was great, but it was kind of nice here...

He shook his head out. He needed to benefit his friends. But was going back to them while he was in a major source of information truly necessary in order to benefit them?

"Skyla, if it's too much trouble I don't mind sticking around here..."

"I don't care what your friends find out Riku; for god's sake take all my files with you if you want. Knowledge of us won't help you in the long run."

"No, really." No really he was trapped. Skyla was awful sharp, she wasn't kidding when she said her true interest was behaviour patterns.

"You really want to stick around here with a nobody who won't speak a word, one who's too hyper for his own well being, and a third who knows you so well from your file that she can practically read your mind?" she smirked at the blank look Riku suddenly got.

"You... have a file about me?"

"What do you think Xemnas did the whole time? He didn't just sit about ordering his other idiots around." She walked over to a cabinet, flicking it open without touching it and picking out a rather thick file. "Feel free to take a look." She left it on the table near the door as she walked out.

Riku couldn't help but notice that her own behaviour was him helping to read her actions.

--

"So what you're saying is that we need to go fix this problem with Hades for Sora to return to normal?"

Kairi was concerned with the information that Meg gave them. An energy sapping field was somehow affecting Sora and Hercules and not the rest of them.

"Is it just me or is it only affecting the heroes?" Donald complained, still bitter at the not present Phil for past actions involving the title of 'junior heroes'.

"I was wondering that myself." Meg commented, "There's no other real heroes around here to test that theory on, but clearly Sora just confirmed it."

"Yea... and how are we supposed to stop him without Sora's assistance?"

"Perhaps I can be of assistance?" A dark voice came from behind them, one that all of them but Kairi was able to recognize.

--

After a short bit of wandering, Kisatrix was finally where she wanted to be.

Eternally lying between day and night, Twilight Town was the optimal place for the people she was seeking to recover from their last bout.

Walking into the hotel that she was sure they'd be at; she looked over to find exactly who she wanted to see.

The black haired figure jumped up at Kisatrix's sudden presence in the room, clearly not expecting her anywhere around, and especially not seeking them any further.

"Kris! I mean... Kisatrix is it now?" He stuttered trying to get the story straight.

"To what do I owe this visit?"


	8. Chapter 8

"Auron!"

Donald jumped up and down excitedly, and Goofy also looked happy. Kairi was a little concerned though, this man didn't look to be the nicest person in the world with his large sword and the fact that only one arm appeared to be useable...

Seeing as Donald and Goofy seemed to know him however eased the worry a bit.

"Don't we need to have a keyblade to get through the heartless without large complications?" Kairi asked in slight wonderment. How on earth were they going to pull this off?

"Take his." Auron nodded his head towards Sora.

Kairi was uncertain about that idea, but changed her mind when she remembered that she had previously used a keyblade that Riku had given her. She just hoped Sora wouldn't summon it back on her without her knowing.

--

"I think you should slow down Kairi! You're going to get hurt!"

Donald and Goofy had to run fast in order to keep up with Kairi now that she was in the middle of taking out heartless left, right, and centre. Even Auron was becoming a little stifled at the speed at which she was running towards the centre of the underworld.

"Not that way!" Goofy quickly said to change Kairi's direction as she almost took a wrong turn. There was something in her overconfidence that said that they were all going to end up hurt in this process.

--

"I wanted to say sorry, and laugh at your current condition."

Kisatrix and Damayon stared at each other from across the room now. He had hoped she flipped sides, but it would seem that it wasn't the case.

"I truly didn't think you'd do that Kris, if I had known they had brainwashed you that much we would've taken better care after you had gotten back from the water."

"Brainwashed?" Kisatrix smirked, "You clearly don't yet understand. I hope you've taken your downtime to do some research. I can't feel anything for you guys."

"I know. Ray's upset though, hasn't been able to sleep at all after he had woken up the next day."

Kisatrix's expression changed at the mention of Ray.

"That's actually why I'm here, to check on him."

"You sure? You did that to him yourself, I'm not sure he wants to see you."

"I don't need to see him. Just tell me he's okay." She was becoming annoyed with Damayon, he had always been like this, but she would've thought he'd be a little more considerate about the matter.

"He's fine. A few minor burns here and there. You are aware his eye colour split after you left right? It's not good for him." Damayon shook his head, taking another look at her. "Your eyes kept, why is that?"

"You're asking someone who doesn't know, Damay. Just watch his don't turn red too often." She turned to leave. "Tell him I said I'm sorry at the very least, try not to twist it like I know you can."

She walked slowly away. Damayon wasn't sure what to do with Kisatrix's apology, even if he wanted to twist it. If she didn't have any emotions anymore could she truly be sorry?

"Oh, Damay. You're going to get hurt if you keep chasing us."

--

"These files are really detailed!"

Riku was excited as he went through all Skyla's files. When she had finally come back to the room she had found it in a total disaster from Riku taking files and throwing them places, looking for information that he wanted.

"You're a messy kid you know?" She sighed as she made different files appear back where they actually belonged. "Find what you were looking for?"

"Exactly what I was looking for!" Riku exclaimed, throwing another file away and almost hitting Skyla in the head with it. "Except one detail..."

"What's that?" She made the file that had nearly beheaded her appear where it belonged too, leaving the file Riku was looking at the only one out.

"Your own file. There are details missing, like where exactly you came from and stuff. And your weapon. Do you not have one or something?" Riku closed the file and handed it to her.

"You really think that since I'm the only one who sees these files I want to be reminded of my past every time I want to check something?" Her sharp voice practically cut Riku's head off itself; she went over and filed her own papers again too. Riku felt bad again, not meaning to bring that up again.

"Sorry... but your weapon?"

"I have one if you really must know. Not only do I not need it but it's rather too dangerous to bring into every fight with the power amplifications I added onto it." She was clearly not happy at all now. She didn't care about Riku finding out about their plans, but she wasn't a topic she wanted to talk about as much as he seemed to want to.

"Tell me when you want to go, I don't care anymore. And don't mess up this room that badly again."

--

Now locked in a battle with Hades, Kairi and Auron were slashing him ruthlessly to no avail. It seemed as though the lord of the underworld had gotten stronger on them again.

Donald and Goofy were locked out of the battle yet again. It always seemed as though that happened, it often made them feel rather useless about it.

Kairi hadn't lost her momentum yet, even though Hades clearly had the upper hand. She wasn't expecting however for the giant jet stream of flames to come rushing at her.

Auron stepped in to take the blow for her, allowing her to slip behind Hades again and get in a couple more hard swings in.

This continued in a pattern for a little awhile. Fire would get shot, Auron would block it and Kairi would get a couple more swings in. It wasn't for a long while that Hades learned that it was going to happen every time that he shot the fire at them, and immediately changed the tactics he was using.

Soon he was using a spiral type attack that was hard for both of them to avoid. Only when he stopped shooting fire was Auron able to distract him enough to let Kairi in for another attack.

This way and that. Eventually he started shooting flames out of the ground. Out of the ceiling. Every which way that Kairi had a hard time avoiding.

Finally Auron got in a blow that stopped the flames from shooting up everywhere, allowing Kairi to get in the final blow. Hades cursed them again, so sick of being defeated by practically everyone who wasn't from this world.

--

"I feel so much better!"

Sora exclaimed his happiness as Kairi, Auron, Donald and Goofy returned. Meg looked pleased that he was feeling better as well. If Sora's head had cleared that must mean that Hercules was doing better as well.

"Oh my, are you alright Kairi?!" Sora ran to her instantly, looking over a few burn spots that she had gotten in the fight with Hades.

"I'm fine Sora." She laughed and handed back his keyblade, looking at Meg. "You call us if there are anymore heartless problems."

"Will do." Meg confirmed, as she waved goodbye to Sora and the rest of them. "Next time, let Sora be the hero though. Kairi just made him look bad in Phil's eyes."

Sora and his friends waved back at her as they left.

"Tell Herc we said hi!"


	9. Chapter 9

"You want to know what your stupid problem is? You're too curious, and now it's getting on my nerves."

It was some time later. Riku hadn't left yet. And Skylexia's observations had shown that Sora had solved the heartless problems in Deep Jungle, Agrabah, and Neverland. And now, Riku was going to get his skull pounded in.

See, Skylexia didn't truly care what exactly Riku saw. He could ask and she'd show him almost anything. But this was unacceptable behaviour for someone given as many rights while kidnapped as he was allowed.

Skyla had come to her room to take a look for a file that she assumed that she herself had misplaced, and had found Riku going through her stuff.

"Did you at least find what you're looking for?"

"Nope, can't find your weapon anywhere."

"No duh, I'm carrying it with me all the time you dimwit." Skyla shook her head. "I control space; I can easily trick your eye you know. I have a spatial shift surrounding it; it shifts the space on any side of it. Pretty much, I made it invisible. Are you happy now?"

Riku just stared at her. Right when he thought she was figured out he found out something new.

"You're going back to your friends now; I really don't think you should stay here."

"Because I'm bothering your memories."

"Great job Captain Obvious." She rolled her eyes "Give me one good reason why you should stick around here anymore, your friends are looking for you. Kairi especially is missing you. She's afraid you've switched sides."

"And why couldn't I have switched sides?" He got up and walked directly over to her, staring into her eyes. He then got dizzy from looking into them, the purple seemed to shift hues sometimes. He could clearly see how she controlled space that way and why in fights she kept them closed when she didn't need to defend herself.

"Nice try playing lust there Riku, now grow up. I can't feel, duh." Skyla walked around him, allowing him to recover from the dizzy spell. "You're not supposed to stare into unmanaged spatial shifts anyway, because then you obviously get dizzy."

"Okay, okay, fine, I'm sorry for being an idiot there." He finished shaking his head out. "I just have one more question..."

"What info is there that you haven't already dragged out of the file room? Which by the way you left a mess again, that's annoying me too..."

"Roxas' situation. All three of you have hearted counterparts, don't you?"

--

"Kisatrix! Kisatrix!"

Elexi had run up behind the female nobody, hugging her from behind in excitement.

"We've got a mission! We're going out! Oh my goodness!"

"Oh dear god..." Were the only words that came out of Kisatrix's mouth before switching routes and walking towards her own room to prepare for dealing with both Elexi and a mission at the same time. "Walk and talk. Fill me in. What does Skyla want us to do?"

"We've got to find Damayon's group!"

"WHAT?"

She stopped in her tracks. Why did they have to do this now? Last she had checked Damayon wasn't in the best condition for fighting. Although, it had been three days since she had gone to check on Ray. A general sense of sadness swept over her, so much so that even Elexi the hyper maniac noticed it and adjusted his mood.

"Kisatrix... I know it's not the greatest mission ever, but they are in our way and not even you being on this side seems to be changing their opinion."

"He saved me Elexi, you need to understand that." Her snapping at him caused Elexi to cringe in a sense of fear. "Let's just go." She relaxed and continued walking towards her room. This was not her idea of a fun day.

--

"You really want to know if we have hearts."

Skyla was now pacing the room, trying to decide whether to let Riku in on it. And if not, how was she going to cover it up now that she was pacing and thinking of how to word it?

"In terms of Roxas' situation relating to Sora, it's similar." She sighed. "Our hearts aren't what we want anymore though; they've become exactly what we don't want to be. At least in the case of Elexi and myself, Kisatrix's heart is a little different...

"I'm sure you've met Damayon and his group?"

Riku thought back a moment and nodded, a little confused as to why they were being dragged into this however.

"Kisatrix, or I guess it's Kris to them... anyway, they're from a world where powers like nobodies come with being born. That's how her fire power got amplified when she became a nobody. Her power more or less comes from her eye colour, though not in the same why mine does... is this making any sense so far?"

Riku shook his head, completely lost.

"Let's start again... she comes from a world called 'Light's Destiny', optimal place to take darkness incase you're wondering, there people are born with the powers to uphold a state of light, although now and then you get a case like Damayon's dark wielding, but even that has a purpose." She stopped pacing a moment to find Riku nodding along with her before continuing to pace and talk.

"There's one family, their eye colour is split like hers. Rings on the outside and inside which determines their control over the element. When they get heavily traumatized their eye color becomes solid, switching out between their elemental colour and red.

"The point is, when Kisatrix turned into a heartless and nobody, her brother Ray killed her heartless fast enough to save her heart. She was everything she wanted to be; technically she's the only one of us who wants their original heart back."

Riku blinked. Damayon's group said they had been chasing the nobodies to try and stop the darkness. And the only thing that had appeared to traumatize Ray was the fact that Damayon was out of it and hanging off his shoulder constantly. There was another thing though in that Kisatrix appeared to have all her memories intact, unlike Roxas who lost all his memories when he had turned into a nobody. Was there something different about Kisatrix that changed this?

"And what about your real hearts? Where are they?"

"We don't know where our heart is. And if we knew where Kisatrix's was she wouldn't exactly be with us anymore would she?"

"You're lying." Riku instantly caught the lie, causing Skyla to stop pacing and stare at him again, "You have Kisatrix's heart, but you want her on your side and not theirs."

That comment however made Skyla laugh hysterically, thinking about how much he must be over thinking this to come to that conclusion.

"Riku. Oh man. Why would we have it and not give it to her? The only reason she's with us is because she feels we have a better chance of finding it than Damayon's group does. It's her choice, I'm not like Xemnas, if she changes her mind she could leave anytime she wants." She was still laughing by the time she had reached the door to leave the room, but collected herself quickly in order to not encourage Elexi's insanity.

"Now get ready to go, we're leaving in five minutes."


	10. Chapter 10

"Wow, that's a lot of work."

Kairi was worn out from all that work, going from world to world dealing with the heartless problems of each. She felt so sorry towards Sora, who she had left to do all that by himself for the most part in the previous events.

Not just Kairi was worn out from all the work, Sora was starting to lose some momentum as well. He had never remembered heartless being quite that hard to deal with. They weren't even dealing with the nobody side at the moment it seemed.

"Where to next?" Donald and Goofy were worn out, but not quite so much as Sora and Kairi seemed to be. It was like the keyblades were draining their energy to an extent even.

"Twilight Town." Sora read off the radar screen, "How does that place even still exist I wonder..."

"Places don't just disappear Sora. Only half of it was actually computer generated if my memory serves me." Kairi was also looking at the radar, wondering how many more worlds were left to deal with. They had just covered three after the Coliseum, but there were plenty of worlds otherwise.

Kairi was also swinging around her keyblade subconsciously for practice. Sora had given her a keyblade of her own so he wouldn't have to protect her at every moment of the adventure. Not that he didn't end up doing that anyway...

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Donald asked in excitement.

--

Upon landing in Twilight Town, they were instantly confronted with two familiar figures.

"I told you they'd come the next night." It wasn't exactly the nicest greeting in the world, but Mirra didn't exactly look her happiest at the moment anyway.

"How are you getting along?" Ray observed that their silver haired friend wasn't accompanying them, and instantly knew what happened "Never leave one behind with them, Skyla's too smart for that."

"We noticed." Sora sighed, "What's going on here?"

"Three days ago Kisatrix confronted Damayon." Mirra summed up in a couple words, "Other than that, absolutely nothing has gone on besides us doing some research. We've finally got our heads wrapped around the concepts of darkness; I think we're doing well."

"Why would only she confront him though? I thought they did very little without Skyla around."

"She has a couple ties to us." Ray sighed, clearly not liking the fact that she was tied to them at the moment. "The point is, we're in her way of becoming whole. Even with the ties she's the one who burnt your island, and us, which shows her determination."

"Weird..." Sora had never thought about Damayon's group having any tie to the nobodies. However, since their world had been taken by darkness it wasn't exactly surprising. "Where is Damayon anyway?"

Both Mirra and Ray shrugged, neither of them knowing anything about his whereabouts.

--

Damayon knew his whereabouts though. In his hotel room thinking deeply.

Kisatrix was right in his mind; they were going to get hurt trying to chase them down. But could he really allow the darkness to continue to do to other worlds what it had done to his own?

It bothered him greatly to think about things that way. There was no way that he could allow it to continue, but his didn't want his comrades to get hurt, or really to hurt Kisatrix himself.

"I miss you, Kris..."

--

Mirra and Ray had come to an agreement with Sora. As soon as they found Damayon they would go with the quartet to the next world, in hopes of getting closer to the goal of stopping the completion of Kingdom Hearts.

Donald and Goofy had run off in order to take the Gummi Ship to get a size upgrade to accommodate the larger group, while the four remaining went off to look for Damayon to take with them.

The agreed to split up, and find him one way or another.

--

Ray walked slowly in the forest part of this world. He didn't know Damayon to like the woods much, but he thought that maybe the abandoned house on the edge of the world was a place that would pique his interest.

The gates were somehow open, so he knew that someone was at least around.

--

Kairi had quickly managed to find Damayon in his hotel room mumbling to himself. All Mirra had to say upon hearing about him talking to himself was to shake her head in disapproval.

"It's not really his fault; both he and Ray were highly traumatized upon the darkness taking our world."

"Great, now where's Ray?" Sora looked around. Donald and Goofy had come running back, confirming the Gummi Ship upgrade. It was useless however without Ray back from searching.

"He couldn't have thought that Damayon had run that far away... I don't feel like going to look for him..."

"I wouldn't worry." An unfamiliarly familiar voice came from behind them all. "Go on without him, he'll somehow catch up."

"WHERE IS RIKU?!" This was Sora's first encounter with the nobodies since the incident on the island. Elexi didn't look happy to be yelled at like that.

"Chill kiddo. Skyla's in the mansion on the edge of town with him. And your friend." He nodded at Damayon and Mirra, "Err, what's his name... Ray was it?"

Damayon and Mirra looked in shock at that, why would Ray be searching that far away for Damayon?

"Anyway, unless you want vines to be growing out of their eyes, you'd better come quickly. I like making vines grow out of people's eyes." He looked over at a random resident.

The resident suddenly stopped in his tracks. After a couple sharp breaths he began screaming and flailing his arms around. Long, thorny vines had begun to grow out of the person's eyes, and the blood stained vines started blooming the beautiful, blue roses that Elexi was so well known for. All Elexi could do was laugh in extreme amusement at the person's pain, before regaining himself he had fallen on the ground to hold his stomach from laughing so much.

"Oops, Skyla told me not to do that." He sighed as he brushed himself off and adjusted his scarf. Seeing the look of disgust upon the group's face made him want to laugh yet again, but decided that since he was on a mission maybe he should continue with the actual mission.

"Oh, like you've never wanted to tear out someone's eyeballs before. Anyway. That's an example of what will happen to Ray and Riku if you don't come quickly. Please don't come. Toodles" He waved as he disappeared into the nobody's signature void portal.

"Oh my god!" Were the only words that came out of Kairi's mouth, still dumbstruck that the man had vines growing out of his eyes. "That man is going to turn into Riku!"

With that comment the rest of the group decided that maybe Kairi was losing her mind from all this journeying. That or she didn't like the blood on the vines. One way or another, they had to get to the mansion to save both Riku and Ray.

--

"Wow..."

"I know... I didn't know she could be like that..."

Within the confines of the mansion at the edge of Twilight Town, there was a rather large argument occurring between Kisatrix and Ray.

"Krista-Lynn! You need to stop going against us, you know that the darkness isn't right!"

"Don't you dare use my middle name on me! The darkness is the only way I'm going to get my heart back Ray, just because you saved it doesn't mean that it's going to come back to me on its own, nor do I find you capable of finding it yourself. Skylexia's been nothing but nice to me about it, even though she and Elexi are searching for hearts different from their originals."

Ray just stepped back in astonishment; Riku and Skyla were amazed that even with no true emotion Kisatrix could be so assertive. She was normally so quiet and reserved.

Elexi appeared not moments after Ray and Kisatrix had finally stopped arguing so loudly.

"Everything's set Skyla!"

"What's set?" Riku asked in curiosity.

"Just play along dear." Skyla smiled at him, he was sure it looked evil. Her voice was so falsely nice, like a mother who was promising something she knew would never happen. Something wasn't right here.

Elexi was now bouncing around excitedly, running in circles and waving his arms around.

"Isn't this exciting?"


	11. Chapter 11

"This is what was set?"

Riku and Skyla stood above the action, observing in discontent. This wasn't how Skyla wanted this to go, nor was it what Riku wanted to see his friends doing upon finding him again.

"No, this is definitely not what I had in mind." Skyla stated in her bland, unimpressed voice as she dodged a flying running shoe that had magically flung itself at her head.

What had happened upon the arrival of everyone who wasn't already there was they looked at Kisatrix and Ray fighting, and Elexi flailing his arms around in the air, and magically decided they were all annoyed with each other.

Now it was a battle royal. Everyone was fighting and no one seemed to care whose hair they were pulling. Or who they were pushing over. Skyla and Riku were far enough away to not be directly involved, but they almost wish they were involved so that it didn't look so weird.

"EVERYBODY STOP!" Riku ducked for cover with how loud Skyla was able to project her voice overtop of the commotion. Despite practically breaking Riku's eardrums, it was effective at making everyone stop in their tracks.

"That includes you Elexi. Get off Kisatrix's hair please." Elexi giggled a little as he got off Kisatrix's hair. No one was even sure how he got started on that while she was fighting with Ray...

"Now, everyone, as much fun as fighting is and how I hope someone's head gets smashed in as long as it's not my own team... we need to get along within our own respective groups in order for my evil plot to work. Kisatrix, you go with Damayon's group. Riku, go to your friends."

Riku sighed and returned to Sora and the rest of them, and Kisatrix scowled at Skyla before joining with Damayon's group for a talk, leaving Elexi and Skyla to wait.

"What are we supposed to be doing, Skyla?" Elexi wondered curiously.

"I don't know," she shrugged, "is there some problem with me that you'd like to talk about?"

"Well... you're really really hard to understand sometimes. Like, when you give Kisatrix orders. It's bad enough that I don't like following plans without cookies, but when you give the orders to her she doesn't entirely care and then I'm confused and need more cookies."

Skyla simply shook her head. She knew that already, but seeing as Elexi was crazy and Kisatrix didn't care she knew it wouldn't even matter if she started giving the direct orders to Elexi.

"I gave you the orders for this first, you know."

"I know." Elexi smiled.

Skyla shook her head once more, and then shifted her weight onto her other foot, watching the groups somehow calmly work out their differences.

"And would you like to explain the man writhing in pain in the middle of Twilight Town with those vines growing out of his eyes?" The question was basically dragged out of nowhere, but seeing as the vines were still growing it wasn't like she couldn't tell that the amount of open space in the world was decreasing.

"Ummm... hehe?" Elexi smiled again and laughed to himself.

"Were you drinking pop in your memories again?"

"Nooo..."

"Of course you weren't."

The two stood in silence for what seemed like a long period of time, watching everyone else.

"Would you like some pop Elexi?"

"YES YESSSS I DOOOO!!"

--

"Judging by how friendly you and Skyla seem to be, I don't think you were in any hurry to come back Riku."

Sora and Kairi were relieved to see Riku, but that didn't make them happy with him. Despite the fight that had broken out they had seen how Skyla and Riku were getting along just fine, and were concerned for which side he was actually on based on his case history with the darkness.

"I was getting information for you guys. You can't seriously believe that I'd make the same mistake twice?"

"Well in my opinion," Kairi's voice to the angry level she was at, making Riku and even Sora back off her a bit, "you should have never left for the darkness in the first place. How are we supposed to completely trust you again based on your history and how long you were actually behind enemy lines?"

"Yea, Riku." Sora finally gained enough courage to stand behind Kairi on this, as scary as she was being about it, "How do we know you're not just coming back to gather information on us for her?"

Riku took a couple steps back in defense. He wanted to have Skyla back him up, but that wouldn't exactly be beneficial to his case. Not that Skyla appeared to be there anymore… she must've gone to get something.

It took a moment before he realized that Skyla didn't even need him to spy on them in the first place. The files she had – they were so complete. The files summed up everyone's personality and fighting styles right down to the angle range Sora's upswing was. He couldn't help but start laughing.

"You guys really think that Skyla needs that? If anything they're at a disadvantage having me around, while you're at a disadvantage to not have me around."

Kairi and Sora looked at each other, and then back at Donald and Goofy for their opinion. Neither of them actually knew Riku that well and therefore couldn't exactly give their opinion on the matter.

"Sora…" Donald decided to at least give his opinion based on Sora's history and what he knew of Riku, "I think that after what you went through to find him that Riku wouldn't betray you. At least not on purpose."

"I have to agree with Donald…" Goofy put out there, "You went to a lot of work and convincing to get him to come back, remember? You really want to push him back towards the darkness if he really is telling the truth about being on your side?"

Kairi was now convinced. Sora had put a lot on the line in order to bring Riku back from the darkness, and she hoped she knew him well enough that he wouldn't do that again. She looked at Sora with a look that signified that she agreed with Donald and Goofy. Sora sighed, figuring that even if he himself weren't convinced he was definitely outnumbered here.

"Welcome back Riku. We missed you."

--

Damayon and his group weren't going to get over stuff that easily. In Ray's own mind, his little sister had betrayed him after he had gone to all that trouble to save her life. Kisatrix, while grateful, was sure that by completing Kingdom Hearts with the nobodies was the best way to regain her own heart. After all, the nobodies knew best about what it was like without a heart and what was necessary to regain one.

The details of the conversation were fairly repetitive. Damayon and Mirra had quickly resolved their differences, but Ray and Kisatrix were arguing the same points over and over again. Ray wanted to protect his little sister, but Kisatrix wanted to do things her own way. Things weren't going to stop anytime soon.

Elexi and Skyla had now returned from getting Elexi some Cream Soda. Elexi had also talked Skyla into letting him have a bag of cotton candy too; it was hard trying to contain his hyperness like Skyla had requested him to upon returning.

However, not long after their return the mansion appeared to have been swallowed by darkness suddenly.

Skyla was shaking; the darkness this time was clearly not of her own doing, as she had lost all sense of space in the middle of it. Elexi, Kisatrix and Riku all noticed this change, but no one else was aware that someone besides the nobodies was controlling the darkness at this point.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING SKYLA?!" Sora screamed at her. Damayon, Mirra and Ray all got up to attack her, but their tune changed when they realized that she wasn't acting normal.

"Leave Skyla alone, there's another problem here."


	12. Chapter 12

"So if this isn't Skyla's doing, then what the hell is going on?"

"I think the world is ending!" Elexi yelled excitedly, the pop and candy clearly going straight to his head.

The ground shook underneath all of them. Several of them fell over, got back up, and had a hard time keeping a vertical base. Only Skyla managed to not topple even once, being so sick to her stomach that her legs adjusted themselves to the turbulence on their own.

It wasn't that long before the shaking stopped, and only then did Skyla manage to fall over, causing Elexi and Kisatrix more alarm than Skyla being sick in the first place did. There could only be one cause for this.

Both of them looked up to the right before the figure had even appeared.

"Ah, Eli, how're you?" The figure said kindly, although in his ominous and dark voice. "I see Skye is taking this new darkness well. Having fun going after Kingdom Hearts?"

"Hullo, King Idiot." Elexi greeted him back, although not quite as nicely. "Allow me to remind you that my name is Elexi. And her name is Skylexia. How did the spatial rift in her lab not kill you?"

"That is a very good question, Eli." He used Elexi's original name on purpose now that he was aware that it annoyed him. "It could be because the rift was started accidentally it seemed. Though since Skye's a little… out of it, I suppose her assistant could tell me if that rift machine was created on purpose as a ploy to escape my kingdom?"

Riku explained a little about Skyla's past quietly to Sora, in order to make this odd scene make a little more sense for everyone. It wasn't long after that when Sora realized where that was.

"We need to check up on Leon's gang later." Sora whispered to all four of his friends, "I'll explain that a little later for you Riku."

Damayon's group was pretty much just playing a backseat to the happenings, it was clear that Ray's argument with Kisatrix was going to be postponed until this new problem was fixed.

Elexi was just busy trying to figure out what to say. What would happen if he told the truth? Well, for one thing both King Idiot and Skyla would kick his ass, but if he lied then King Idiot would kick his ass… option B was definitely safer.

"No, Skyla would never do that to you. She was a… awe crap I suck at lying." He shook his head. Even if he justified the lie it would definitely not sound like Skyla. "Of course she did it on purpose, what else was she supposed to do?"

"All I wanted; now I have grounds for execution."

"I think not."

--

The next thing most of them knew, they were outside the mansion. The entirety of both Sora's and Damayon's group had ended up outside the mansion in Twilight Town.

The mansion itself looked like a black hole in the middle of a starry sky.

Ray looked like he was deep in thought, thinking about how his sister reacted to him wanting to help. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't meant to help her in the way that he wanted. Maybe he should help with the way she wanted to go about doing this.

"What's on your mind?" Mirra wasn't used to seeing Ray think this hard.

"Are we chasing the wrong goal?"

"I think we might be." Damayon joined in the conversation, pretty much knowing what was on Ray's mind at the moment. He had more or less been thinking the same thing from the start.

"What do we do with them then?" Mirra eyed Sora's group, who were currently trying to find the source of the darkness to try and cut it off before it spawned heartless or something equally as horrible.

"Damay's got what we need to help Kris. We can probably do without those four."

"Ray, you're sure about this right? You don't want to continue trying to help in your own manner, because getting rid of those four has risks." Damayon wasn't as enthusiastic about this plan.

"It can also have rewards. Like, we might get Kris back sometime this year." Mirra pointed out.

"But, Mirra, listen to me here. If we get rid of those four, and we finish Kingdom Hearts and properly close it, who's going to deal with the heartless bound to return? I'm not going that far just for Kris…"

"Did you calculate the odds of us actually defeating them, Damay?"

"No, but… isn't that the point?"

"I wouldn't worry. We can try to be on Kris' side, but it is four against three."

--

There wasn't much going on within the mansion itself.

Skyla had more or less come to about half her senses, which wasn't really enough for what she needed to be effective in battle against her former ruler.

--

"_Skye, Skye!"_

"_What is it, Eli?"_

_Within the confines of a palace lab, Professor Skye was busy at work perfecting her next thesis, thinking her theorems of space and time weren't going to pass King Iranis' inspection. Her lab assistant, Eli, had different news for her however._

"_We got the letter from King Iranis! You have full permission to use anything you can get a hold of to prove that space can be moved!"_

_Skye looked at her assistant in shock. It wasn't like the King to accept theories that weren't already half researched by third parties beyond the castle's university science labs. This was a bit of a concern, actually._

"_Was there any other note with the letter? Did you read it all the way through?" Skye's last four theories of space and time had been rejected for experimentation within the labs. Seeing as she never changed them much between submissions for approval, she couldn't think of why this one was any "safer" for experimenting than the first one she had proposed._

"_I read it twice! We're good to go! And, I finished that space rift creator for you."_

"_You… finished it?" Skye found that even more amazing. The first time she had shown her assistant the plans for the rift creator he had almost passed out in confusion. It concerned her a little, how well could it have been built?_

"_Yep! All done! You can check it for yourself, there was one part that I thought was a little loose but I couldn't figure out for the life of me if it was supposed to be that way or what."_

"_I'll take a look, Eli. Just remember the plan."_

--

"_Wow, Eli. This actually looks almost perfect."_

_Skye was sitting up in the rift generator, checking the wiring that Eli had done within the machine. He was a good student, but that didn't mean that this was what he actually wanted to do. It wasn't what she really wanted to do either, but if this plan worked she would never have to worry about that again._

"_So, what are you going to do when you graduate this year?" She climbed out of the machine, closing it up and checking to make sure it was sturdy._

"_I don't plan on graduating." Eli smiled, "If this works I can study to become a florist!"_

"_You and your flowers… sometimes Eli, I do worry about you. Especially when you talk about flowers while building heavy machinery." She grabbed a screwdriver and tightened the part that Eli couldn't figure out. "Who said this was going to work anyway? It's only a theory."_

_Eli just smiled at her, with more happiness than he had seen him have in months._

_Skye smiled back at him, although in her distraction thinking about Eli and his flower shop she tripped over a cord that was plugged into the spatial rift machine for some reason, sending a short charge into it and turning it on. Apparently Eli's work was a little handier than she had originally thought._

_Right at the moment that the rift had opened, King Iranis had burst into the door._

"_Professor Skye, that paper is a forgery! What in midnight's name…?" Was the last thing either Eli or Skye heard before the rift transported them elsewhere._

_--_

These memories were ones that Skyla thought about everyday. Who had plugged that machine in, and why? And why would King Iranis become familiar with the existence of fake papers that quickly? Elexi didn't plug it in, and she was fairly sure King Idiot here did it to set them up.

The memories of rage right before the heartless incident were the only thing keeping her upright. She couldn't see where Kisatrix was, and she had so little sense of space that Elexi and King Idiot kept switching which side of her they were standing on.

"Skyla, what are you doing? You can't use that in here, you can't aim!" Elexi screamed. She could aim alright, but she probably had no idea who she would be aiming at and he couldn't run anywhere.

She felt Kisatrix try and tackle her down to stop her from making a bad decision, but she shook that off too.

"Skyla, this is madness!"

"Hell no. This is revenge."

--

Damayon and his group had now decided to confront Sora's group, after much debate about the pros and cons.

"Hey guys, what's happening?" Sora asked cheerfully. None of the five of them were able to find the source of the darkness. Riku had made the suggestion that the figure from before was the source and that there was very little they could do about it.

Damayon, Mirra, and Ray all looked at each other. They had weighed the pros and cons, but they had never decided how they were going to go about it. Mirra, knowing that the boys would be far to chicken, was the first to speak to Sora after the rest of his group had caught up to him.

"Guys, we need to talk."

"Talk? What, are we just breaking up with them now? I want to fight." Damayon showed sudden enthusiasm for this now, summoning his own keyblade to his hand and standing ready. Sora and Riku, first to notice that it was a keyblade Damayon was holding, had stepped backwards in shock and got a little tangled tripping over Kairi, Donald, and Goofy.

"You have a keyblade?"


	13. Chapter 13

"You're an idiot, Skyla."

Elexi and Kisatrix had managed to make it back to the World That Never Was on their own. If it weren't for a fluke that Skyla had probably only calculated halfway through Elexi's head would probably still be in the darkness.

"She got you out, didn't she?" Kisatrix complained back at him, "Someone's gonna come back dead, I promise you that, and she's not going down without one hell of a fight."

--

"Okay, how did this start?" Sora asked as calmly as he could. Damayon's element was darkness, he knew that, but darkness plus a keyblade never meant anything good. Riku had proven that enough.

"My sister will have her heart back!" Ray proclaimed, summoning his own sword.

"And I will marry his sister!"

"Damayon..." Mirra shook her head in disapproval. He always denied his feelings for Kris, but both she and Ray knew he was crazy for her. And he was just crazy on top of it.

Sora and Riku both sighed and summoned their own keyblades to their hands. They were pretty sure these people had simply lost their minds.

Damayon wasn't going to wait for Mirra to complain at him about this stuff, in the middle of one of her sentences he snapped and picked up his keyblade, going for Sora first but switching at the last second and redirecting the attack at Riku.

Riku didn't see it coming and flew backwards from the force. He was used to this by now, Skyla had lost her temper from him a couple times and sent him flying, but it seemed to hurt more when attacked by a keyblade. Some flashbacks to his fight with Roxas came to mind, but at least Damayon only had one keyblade that they had to worry about.

Damayon however did have two keyblades to worry about, and that number grew to four when Sora threw Kairi his keyblade and summoned two more of his own. Mirra quickly knew that she was going to have to help, but wasn't as excited about the idea as she originally was.

"Who are you taking?" Ray asked Mirra casually. Kairi was taking a moment to gain enough courage to attack, and Riku was recovering from the blow he had already taken. If Mirra and Ray didn't step in Damayon wouldn't be able to handle four keyblades at once.

"I think Riku will challenge you more, dear. I'm not feeling well." Mirra flipped her bangs over her eyes, blinding herself in a sea of pink. "She's wearing pink though, so watch that I don't mess up."

Ray nodded at Mirra and went to meet Riku on his way back to the fight. Mirra had her own weapon of sorts, although with the length of the dagger you wouldn't think that it could do much against any other weapon. With her hair blinding her she had to rely on sound, which was her specialty.

Ray's own sword clashed with Riku's keyblade as they met. Riku wasn't entirely prepared for that blow either, but at least he didn't fall back this time. Instead he pulled back quickly and countered, making Ray the one to fall back a bit. They went back and forth for what seemed like forever, clashing and each falling back in sequence.

Damayon and Sora appeared to be having fun however. It had been so long since Damayon had had a real fighting challenge beyond Skyla's obvious talents at redirecting his attack constantly. Sora was also happy, as heartless never seemed to provide a real challenge with his massive experience dealing with them. He sort of wondered if he could put that on his resume when he got back to the islands...

While both of them often fell, Damayon seemed to fall more, having the clear disadvantage. He wasn't going to give up easily though, as about half the time he instantly bounced back in order to knock Sora off his feet.

Kairi and Mirra were having their own fun. Both Mirra and Kairi were the type to defend a lot, so Kairi having the weapon advantage was on the offence. Mirra had no problem with that though. She wasn't even trying to hit Kairi, her goal was simply to distract her until Ray and Damayon got tired or bored of fighting the other two.

--

It was a long time later before the boys had managed to decide they were fairly evenly matched. During this time, Donald and Goofy had managed to go and get themselves ice cream and have a little talk of their own about where things were going with all this.

Ray and Damayon had finally fallen on their own accord. Mirra, not appearing to have tired in the least, simply shook her head at them. Damayon struggled to say something while catching is breath, but it didn't work.

"Damayon means to say 'we shall return!', but as you can see he's tired. We'll be taking our leave now, please and thank you." She raised her leg to kick Kairi's keyblade downwards, getting it stuck in the ground.

Damayon and Ray just knew not to question Mirra at the moment, and got up to run off after her.

"Wow that was a pretty amazing fight." Sora stuck both his keyblades in the ground, panting about as heavily as Damayon and Ray had been. While they were good, he and Riku clearly had more experience with the keyblade.

Riku wanted to disagree however. Ray was clearly a swordsman, and the cuts all over his arms stood to prove that. He assumed it was a family trade, seeing as Kisatrix was also seen with a sword on the island.

"Are you two okay? Riku, you look horrible!" Kairi wasn't all that tired since Mirra had simply taken it easy. Now that it was clear that it was simply a distraction she felt a little stupid for not helping at least Riku.

"I'm fine Kairi, thanks. Anyone remember when the mansion returned?"

Sora and Kairi looked back at the mansion that had previously been a giant ball of darkness. Neither of them were sure when it had returned, but they ran to it as fast as they could, wanting to see if they could find out what had happened.

"Oh come on guys! Where do they get the energy...?" Riku complained, and looked over at Donald and Goofy. Clearly they were annoyed, and now upset that Sora had run off when they had stuff to say to him. "Wanna talk to me about it, guys?"

"Sure, that will work." Donald responded.

--

Inside the mansion itself, Sora and Kairi looked everywhere. They couldn't exactly remember where they had been fighting before the darkness had taken over, or even if there was any evidence that could tell them what had happened, but it didn't hurt to look.

It wasn't until they had returned from the basement to the main hall that they spotted the man who had been controlling the darkness sprawled out on the ground. The leader of Midnight's Light was now dead. Would that mean that Leon and the rest were safe?

"His world wasn't overrun with heartless..." Kairi pointed out, "Was he the one controlling them? And if so, are Leon and the rest of them safe?"

"I guess we'll find out when we get on the Gummi Ship." Sora turned just then to see Riku finally coming in from outside. "Where were you?"

"Talking to Donald and Goofy. They went home." Riku summed up quickly, but the statement made Sora jump.

"Why? Why would they go home?"

"Because you've got me back now and Kairi appears completely capable of taking care of herself, given a keyblade of course." Riku finally cracked his back in order to be able to stand up straight again, sighing with relief. "They found it pointless. They did say however that you were more than welcome to call them again if you lost one of us. They're sending the Gummi Ship back in a little bit."

Sora and Kairi pointed out the death of King Iranis to Riku, although Riku didn't seem surprised in the least at that little piece of news.

"I have no idea what her weapon is, but Skyla should never be taken lightly, even when out of it." Riku couldn't help but feel a little relieved that she was the one to make it out of that fight. He assumed the feeling came from actually spending so much time with her. She was intelligent – was befriending him in a way part of her plan?

He chose not to share his feeling of relief with Sora and Kairi, seeing as he was basically on probation with them. The feelings would fade after hanging out with his friends again anyway.

"The ship should be back now, to Midnight's Light?"


	14. Chapter 14

"Skyla! Skyla open the door!"

Elexi was having a mini-fit, banging on Skyla's door as hard as he could. He and Kisatrix hadn't seen Skyla since she returned, and the only reason they even knew she was back was because she slammed her door upon returning.

"SKYLA! If you're injured I need to help you!"

"Leave me alone Elexi!" Skyla yelled back from inside her room. It was the first either of them had heard from her. As concerned as he was for her well being, at least he knew she was alive.

--

"Now what do you propose, oh mighty Mirra?" Damayon wasn't exactly happy with the situation. He was a little banged up from the fight, as was Ray. Mirra was being pretty commanding over them both, being the only one without significant injuries.

"I think that for the time being we need to set up base near the World That Never Was, and deal with the heartless problem. Based on my research, Damayon, if you focus on killing the heartless it will help Kris' group. Plus if Sora's little group makes it there we can slow them down from tampering with the completion of Kingdom Hearts." Mirra herself was flipping through a book of notes she had made while spending time in the library in Twilight Town. "We do have to be careful though, as I'm not sure any of the three of them wants to trust us on their side..."

"Well then we can't exactly set up base in the actual world, even if not near the castle." Ray put in, knowing that Mirra was thinking about setting up in the town below the castle.

"Then where do you propose? What world is closest to that world? One that has heartless, not like Twilight Town or Atlantica."

"That's a very good question..."

--

Sora, Riku and Kairi finally stopped into Midnight's Light, only to have their fears confirmed.

"Sora, I'm glad you're here!" Leon was standing in the middle of one the main plazas, fighting what looked like a giant spider heartless. They were all over the place, and everyone else in Leon's group was fighting them off.

Kairi was quickly dragged off by Aerith, who was claiming that she needed her help. Not exactly worried about Kairi so long as she was with someone, Sora and Riku took out their keyblades and started fighting them off.

There must have been hundreds, thousands of these heartless even. They didn't pose much of a problem individually, with the power of the keyblades they easily fell and dispersed. The sheer number of them was posing the difficulty however.

The spider shapes didn't last that long, but as soon as their type was gone new and more dangerous types of heartless started appearing. Bomb types, Shadows and Neoshadows, every type of already existent heartless plus some new ones Sora and Riku had never seen before. There was no doubt in either of their minds that the King Idiot figure from before was behind all the new types.

Kairi was helping Aerith. Aerith herself wasn't much of a fighter, but was definitely an excellent healer. After giving Kairi a quick five minute tutorial on how to heal people with the Cure spell, they were both running around taking care of the injuries that everyone was taking from the onslaught of heartless.

Sora and Riku were grateful for the healing. As great in battle as they were that didn't stop the heartless from sneaking up behind them while they weren't paying attention.

It was a long, uphill battle, but the heartless numbers appeared to be finally dwindling.

--

"Thanks, guys." Leon got Sora's group a tray of drinks inside the residence that his group had taken up in this world. Sora and Riku especially were thankful for the drinks, taking out heartless wasn't easy.

"We're so glad you showed up when you did!" Yuffie exclaimed her own happiness. Everyone knew that without Riku and Sora around that it would have taken three times as long to settle the heartless population down here. "I can't believe the nerve of that King..."

"You forget, Yuffie," Leon cut her off before she went ranting and getting herself hurt, "without that idiot of king, the heartless population wouldn't have been held off like that. Although I'd love to know why he just stopped holding them back..."

"He's dead." Sora cut Leon off now, but the news that the king of this world was dead set off an alarm for everyone else in the room.

"He's dead you say?" Merlin wasn't exactly convinced. Neither were any of the rest of them for that matter. The king of this world was an asshole, but Sora hadn't been around enough to kill him.

"Yea, he came and attacked us with his darkness... we found him dead after the fight." Sora elaborated.

"You mean you weren't the one to kill him?"

"No, one of our nobody enemies did. She and her friend appeared to have a connection to him..."

Merlin had a hard time believing this. He conjured a book, clearly from the library of this world, and opened it up.

"Anyone to have a connection to the King that would pit them against him in such a fashion would have to work within the castle. Do you know their names?"

"Elexi... and Skylexia..." Sora scratched his head. He remembered their original names being spoken, but what was said seemed to elude him, causing Riku to shake his head in disapproval at his friend.

"They would have been Eli and Skye, Merlin." Riku corrected Sora, knowing that their nobody names would get Merlin nowhere in finding out who they were. He himself was a little curious; Skyla didn't appear to like talking about her past in the least, so maybe Merlin could shed some light on her secrets.

"Ah, here we are." He handed the book to Leon, "This is probably of more interest to you."

Leon simply shook his head at Merlin. Knowing him he had some up with some magical plan that he just absolutely had to run off and work on.

"Professor Skye, has a Masters degree in Physics, two Bachelors in Psychology and Radical Philosophy. She was creating theories for her Doctorate in Spatial Differences. It would seem that unbeknownst to her the King was submitting her research to other research facilities in order to produce heartless."

Sora looked to be in a slight state of shock. Riku however wasn't surprised; he had more or less pieced together all that on his own, even when Skyla wouldn't talk about it. He wondered if she had found this out somehow on her own.

"How does she know Elexi?" Sora asked eagerly, all this was news to him.

"I'm getting to that, calm down." Leon shook his head again as he flipped a couple pages. Most of Skye's file outlined her thesis work for both her Master's and her Doctorate's degrees.

"Ah, here we go. She taught three classes of advanced theoretical Physics. It wasn't really actual Physics... it was more a primer course for what students could research at the castle's university with all the details of what had already been found and what steps needed to be taken to continue the research. Eli was one of her students, whom she chose as her lab assistant for her doctorate experiments.

"Eli wasn't interested in scientific research however, which was part of the reason she chose him. She didn't want anyone who could sit there and nitpick her ideas, but more someone who knew just enough to at least tell her she was going in the wrong direction. Eli's parents were the ones who wanted him to go into the Sciences; he wanted to study to be a florist."

"No duh." Sora, Riku and Kairi all ended up saying together. If Eli didn't want to be a florist then he was a very unlucky nobody.

"Skye saw this and let him help her for previously mentioned reasons, and because by helping her he could graduate with a Master's degree with very minimal work on his part."

"That's so sweet!" Kairi exclaimed, and Riku could see where Elexi's supposed 'dark past' came from. Skyla wouldn't go into detail, but he could see from that that he had plenty of problems with his parents.

"So this nobody, Skylexia was her name?" Tifa asked, clearly curious now.

"Yes, Skyla I think she prefers. She killed the king of this world, from what I gathered there was a conspiracy?" Riku looked at Leon, who was flipping through pages again, looking for the answer.

"Possibly. Of course they wouldn't keep direct records, but there's a consistency problem here. He was definitely tampering with her research, although not significantly enough that she'd be completely aware..." Leon shut the book, "There's not much else to it."

Riku was now mumbling unintelligibly to himself. There was something wrong with that story. Skyla said she wasn't happy with who she was, although it seemed that besides the conspiracy that she may not have been completely aware of that there wasn't much wrong with her life.

"She wasn't happy with who she was... but then what on earth does she want to be?"


	15. Chapter 15

"I told you, I want to be left alone!"

Skyla wasn't happy with how much Elexi was banging on her door. Injury wise she was fine, she had a cut above her eye from accidentally hitting herself with her own weapon. She supposed that wasn't her fault, it was the darkness negating her sense of direction that had made herself dizzy...

Feeling a bit better now, she was running through her file. Sure, leaving her weapon out of the equation was great, but the way she was using her elemental ability of space didn't seem to be entirely beneficial. If she continued and it got cut off again she highly doubted a half-assed physics calculation done without a calculator was going to save Elexi again.

"Skyla come on I know you're not completely okay now let me in before you get infected! I'll make Kisatrix break down the door!"

"WHAT?" Was Kisatrix's response before Skyla even got to make her comment about how Elexi must be awfully weak to make a girl break down the door. She just snickered to herself about it. It wasn't Elexi's fault that she had reinforced her door after the last time Elexi broke in.

"Fine Elexi, you can come in." She pressed a button on her desk and closed her file. She had yet to tell Elexi that she had an entire file on his history and that Riku had been into them.

"Skyla, your eye!" Elexi wasn't in the door two seconds before noticing the small and nearly completely invisible cut above her eye. Skyla just sighed and sat there patiently while Elexi obsessively disinfected it and put a bandage over it.

"Are you happy now?" Skyla's bland voice was back, clearly not impressed with Elexi at the moment.

"Yep!" Elexi exclaimed before running out of the room, yelling back as he went, "I have something for you Skyla don't move!"

Kisatrix was about as impressed with Elexi as Skyla was at the moment.

"Sky, I want to go check on Damay and the others."

"Do as you wish." Skyla sighed and flipped her hair over the eye Kisatrix couldn't see before facing her and getting off her chair, "Be careful, I wouldn't trust them completely."

"I know. What's wrong with that eye Sky?" Kisatrix wasn't an idiot; Skyla didn't just carefully flip her hair over her eyes before doing something.

"If I tell you, you cannot tell Elexi because he'll flip."

--

"Thanks for your help guys; I think we can handle the heartless here now."

Leon and his friends were in the middle of saying goodbye to Sora, Riku and Kairi. None of them wanted to see them leave again, but for the most part they knew that now that the heartless were under control that their help was probably needed elsewhere.

"You come back when you're done though, we owe you guys a couple parties no doubt!" Yuffie hadn't lost the fact that she was hyper yet. Tifa and Cid just shook their heads at her, but if it ever happened they wouldn't exactly object to a party.

"Don't worry Yuffie, we'll be back." Sora waved as Riku and Kairi pushed him onto the Gummi Ship. They were pretty sure the caffeine in those drinks was getting to his head. They then wondered how much of that stuff Yuffie drank on a daily basis...

--

"I can't believe Skyla, being all like that and not telling Elexi!" Kisatrix was in about as much of a rage as she could be without the benefit of emotion. She had promised Skyla she wouldn't tell Elexi, but someone really should...

She kicked a random stone into the air ahead. All she could see was the ground though, so it surprised her when a loud yelp sound came not long after.

Looking up she realized she had hit her own brother in the head. Looking around, she realized that she hadn't even left the World That Never Was yet. What on earth were they doing here?

"To what do we owe this annoyance?" Kisatrix sighed as she approached them. Some voice in her head told her that this wasn't going to end well.

--

"Skyla, I have your present now!" Elexi ran back into her room to find that she was gone. He scratched his head a bit, unsure of where she might've gone. "Skyla?"

He then left her room and walked down the hall. Even though he was worried he didn't lose the happy spring in his step. He wondered why he bothered acting like this, although he supposed it wasn't horrible. It was better than what his parents wanted him to be like.

They wouldn't believe him. Despite all the papers he himself had found to prove that working in the castle was a giant darkness conspiracy. They wanted him to have a physics doctorate like both of them did and do 'his part' for the well being of this world. He even found their specific research that damn well proved that what they were doing was being used against the world.

He had beaten them though, because his professor believed him. The plan was pure perfection after that, using a simple unproved spatial equation they could've sent the castle into oblivion and saved everyone else. Sure, it would've sent him into oblivion too, until Professor Skye fixed his original calculation that would have saved them both on top of everyone else...

"Skylexia, where have you been?" He caught her sitting in the giant white room meeting area inside the castle. Putting on a falsely serious face he lectured her on how she shouldn't run away while injured, which only made her roll her eyes.

"I've clearly been right here Elexi. What's this you've got for me?"

Elexi smiled and used a void portal to take himself up onto the giant white chair that Skyla was sitting on, handing her the pile of papers he had for her and leaning on the arm of the chair. He was quite pleased with himself, smiling while Skyla flipped through the papers. He wasn't concerned that the speed she was going through them was insanely fast, he knew she was picking up on everything.

"Wow Elexi, I'm impressed." She put the pile of papers back into the neat stack that was originally handed to her. "It looks like we've got it right this time, how on earth are we going to pull it off though? I mean we don't have that many hearts to start with, and this is assuming minimal damage to the original Kingdom Hearts?"

"Yes, half a million hearts seems to be a lot." Elexi sat down next to her, flipping through his papers he pointed something out "However, we already have about twenty thousand hearts to start with, so it's only like four hundred and eighty thousand hearts that we need this time. I know, I know, we don't have a keyblade on our side, but now that King Idiot is dead we're the strongest force of darkness. We can just send that many heartless off after Riku and Sora and them and solve our problem."

"I don't think that's an issue anymore." Kisatrix stepped out of a void portal, followed closely by Damayon's group. All of them were in the middle of a bout of amazement, never having walked through one of the nobody's void portals before.

Elexi jumped up, nearly knocking Skyla off the edge of the incredibly high chair. Skyla grabbed the arm of the chair and held on as tight as she could while Elexi had his little fit.

"What are they doing here? Are you crazy Kisatrix? Are you trying to get us killed? You're going to mess up all our plans! Kill them Kisatrix kill them!"

"Elexi would you calm down!" Both Skyla and Kisatrix yelled at him at the same time. Skyla knew that Kisatrix wouldn't bring anything that would put them in direct danger back, although she did see why Elexi was freaking out.

"They're on our side now, Elexi." Kisatrix elaborated, since she knew Skyla was going to ask why they were there too. "They figure getting my heart back my way is easier than arguing with me and getting nowhere on getting my heart back."

"I guess we can't run around calling them stupid then, eh?" Skyla joked a bit, but then remembered why they were against this in the first place. "I suppose the condition then is that we don't spread the darkness any further than we already have then, right?"

"Spot on!" Damayon and Mirra said enthusiastically.

"Then here's the deal." Skyla appeared on the ground, and Elexi followed by means of a void portal to avoid hurting himself. "You help us fend off the keyblade wielders. With your darkness, you can control the heartless. You don't need to spread it, but I expect you to use it against Sora and Riku, got it?"

"That's fine by me as long as it's in this world."

"Then, I want you to use your keyblade to kill off our own heartless, and release their hearts for Kingdom Hearts."

"I understand." Damayon nodded, he was even less reluctant to use the darkness so long as he was killing off part of it at the same time.

Skyla would feel happy and warm inside at this moment. This was going to work out beautifully if they were on her side. Elexi's estimations that called for half a million heartless to be killed didn't seem quite as outlandish anymore. She just had to ensure that whatever world Sora and his friends went to next there was a whole lot of heartless waiting for them. This suddenly seemed almost too easy.

Elexi could see that Skyla was very happy with this... why was her hair in front of her eye? He went over and brushed it aside himself, only to have Skyla jerk her head backwards so he couldn't see it. He growled a bit and grabbed her head, making her face him.

He couldn't say he was shocked that the one eye's pupil was glazed over with the purple colour that made up the rest of her eye. After all, she had very little reason to see with her space abilities. He was the one who had originally calculated that she'd lose her eyesight if she kept using her powers the way she did.

"And when were you planning on telling me you were finally going blind?"

"I'm sorry, Elexi..."


	16. Chapter 16

"I can't believe you would know this and not tell me!"

Elexi was pacing back and forth. And back. And forth. And during all this pacing he was lecturing Skyla about how the irresponsible thing to do was to not tell him about this.

"I mean, come on Skyla, you know better than anyone the disadvantages to this. What were you going to do when you got your heart back, hmm? You'll lose your powers and I'm fairly certain you would not regain your eyesight. Sure, it doesn't matter now but you didn't calculate in the future and what would happen in that future and if we don't die from this we'll regain our hearts and you will be blind!" He was fairly certain he just made the same point twice, but that was good because it would seem the first seven times he had explained this to her it didn't stick.

"I told you Elexi, I'm sorry." Skyla couldn't make it sound anymore convincing, not that it was her fault.

"Fine, well let's take a look here." He went to take a second look at the eye. "Can you see out of it at all?"

"Yes, it's just... half the world is very purple."

"I don't doubt it. I'm going to go fix some ointment to fix it or something and after it's fixed you're turning off your powers and watching a movie or five." Elexi shook his head and wandered off towards his own world, leaving Skyla to feel incredibly bad about all this.

Damayon and Mirra looked around after Elexi left, noticing that they were the only ones there watching Elexi lecture Skyla. Somehow, Kisatrix and Ray had magically disappeared in the middle of that whole fiasco.

--

Ray and Kisatrix had gone off ahead of Mirra and Damayon.

Kisatrix was fairly sure that fighting with the keyblade wielders on the turf below the World That Never Was couldn't be advantageous in the least. Down there was an even playing field that resembled many other worlds, such as a dark version of Twilight Town. Skyla had mentioned that it reminded her of Midnight's Light, but never having been there herself Kisatrix couldn't say for sure if that was the case.

What she had suggested to Ray was a chamber system, a little more easily linked than the system displayed in the Proof of Existence. Not that those were accessible anymore, it was more or less a room full of broken idols now. Skyla's space powers allowed her to manage to reach the rooms, but she herself and Elexi couldn't take a void portal to them.

Now both of them together were trying to plan out this system. It required a bit of an extension to the castle, but Ray pointed out that this extension could lead away from the peak that was the access point to Kingdom Hearts. Therefore, the keyblade wielders would have to travel twice the distance in order to reach Kingdom Hearts to seal it again, delaying them, which had the potential to be the difference between a victory and a defeat.

It wasn't long before the two of them had a large blueprint laid out on the floor, going over it and drawing in the extensions. When Mirra and Damayon showed up they were more than happy to pitch in their own ideas.

"Um, Kris..." Damayon started after awhile, "This is great and all, but how are we going to get this built?"

"Sky's spatial powers, why?"

"Elexi's specifically instructed her not to use her powers until she watches fifty thousand movies."

"He only said five, Damayon." Mirra rolled her eyes. "But besides that, I think it will be okay. I mean, by the time we get these blueprints finalized she'll have watched eighteen movies."

--

Sora, Riku, and Kairi had arrived in their new destination: Halloween Town. Upon their arrival both Riku and Kairi looked surprised with the change in appearance that occurred. Since Sora had been here twice before it wasn't a shock, but Kairi didn't look happy.

"I'm a ZOMBIE Sora! I look horrible!" She whined and tried to fix her clothes to something she could deal with. Sora and Riku kind of laughed at her a bit, with no intention of being mean. Both had learned that spontaneous costume changes came with the journey to save the world from the darkness and seal Kingdom Hearts.

Sora's vampire guise came with the gig here, although he had always found the fact that he had fangs just a little difficult to get used to. Riku wasn't sure what he was.

"I think you're supposed to be a ghost, Riku." Kairi giggled.

"And what gives you that idea?"

"Well..." Sora was also giggling; it took him a moment to regain himself. "It could be because of the giant white sheet that has eyes cut out that would give it away."

Riku just twitched from under the giant white sheet. What he wondered was how he was supposed to fight the heartless in such a ridiculous costume. Why didn't Sora and Kairi get the stupid looking guise?

"Whatever. The point is, we're here to kill heartless and deal with the problem." Riku finally found the holes in either side of the sheet that were meant for his arms. It was such an odd way to have to fight.

"Yea, and if you can't kill one you can always just throw in the white towel."

"That's not funny, Sora."

--

Not long after arriving in the main square, they were instantly bombarded with a number of heartless unique to this world. Mummies and the like all came after the three keyblade wielders, and both Sora and Riku instantly knew where this merciless onslaught came from.

Only Riku knew the reasons behind it. Skyla had been working on calculating how many hearts she needed to complete Kingdom Hearts, he instantly assumed that she had found that number and sent a small percentage of that number here. And she would continue to do this, over and over until she had what she needed. He'd let Sora in on this later.

Left and right they attacked all three of the keyblade wielders, but not long after their attempt to overtake them they fell and dispersed at the power of the keyblades. They weren't much of a problem for them, was this part of the plan?

Eventually the threesome managed to fight their way over to the doctor's lab, and weren't surprised to find Jack and the mayor in there, all in worry over what was going down outside with the obscene amounts of heartless swarming the plaza.

Jack looked so relieved to see them all, although not quite sure who these two new people following Sora around were. He could understand Kairi's costume, being a zombie and all. He couldn't place however what would possess Riku to wear such a costume.

"That's a very interesting costume you've got there..." Jack commented a little uneasily after the greetings were over and done with. Riku was twitching under his giant white sheet again, clearly not amused.

"It's not my fault that I'm wearing this, okay? This costume just came with this world; I had no say in it." Riku was now quite grumpy, so went off the take another look at how the heartless population in the plaza was re-spawning itself.

Sora was a little amused at Riku's behaviour. He wasn't one to become that easily annoyed, but the costume was pretty ridiculous still.

"So what's happening, Jack?"

"It's not Oogie Boogie this time, if that's what you're thinking. There's another dark person here, spreading the heartless. Our problem with that is that she may or may not be planning to resurrect Oogie Boogie. Again. It's a real problem we think." Jack summed up the situation in a couple words.

"Another dark force? She?" Sora's thoughts instantly drifted to Skyla, but why wouldn't he say that three figures brought the darkness then? Was there another issue?

"Yes, jet black shoulder length hair. Glowing yellow eyes. She appears to be a heartless herself, but is so much more intelligent than the rest of them."

Riku had come back just in time to hear the description of the dark figure that had brought the heartless. He knew that it wasn't Skyla, but he had a good idea of who it was.

"Where is she normally?" He asked, heading for the door once again. He knew exactly how to deal with this.

"Oogie Boogie's tree house, of course. Why do you think we have fears of her trying to resurrect him? I'll come with you." Jack said, catching up with Sora's threesome at the door.

"Trust me Jack, the resurrection of Oogie Boogie will seem like a slight annoyance compared to the damage she's capable of causing on her own."

--

Before they even were close to the place where Oogie Boogie's tree house was stationed, Riku's fears were confirmed.

From across the graveyard he could see glowing yellow eyes of the figure he'd seen not often enough during his time in the World That Never Was. It seemed that maybe Ray didn't save Kisatrix's heart as well as he claimed to.

Sora came to a similar conclusion to Riku, although he clearly didn't care about it as much.

"You read the files Riku, what do we go about doing here?"

Riku was in the middle of a deep thought process at this time however. It didn't make any sense, all the files pointed to the fact that Kisatrix' heart was saved. Thinking back to the situation with Sora and Roxas he realized that that had to mean that Kris existed somewhere.

"Sora... I don't think this is real."

"What do you mean?" This threw Sora off a bit. What made Riku's conclusion come out differently than his?

"Your heart was saved, you came back and Roxas existed. In all rational reasoning the same thing happened with Kisatrix, except she has all her memories. There's an inconsistency issue that I didn't see here before, in that Ray had no way of saving her heart, Damayon being the one who had the keyblade. Unless he stole the keyblade for a moment there's no way it could have worked, and if he did steal the keyblade it may not have been completely effective..." To Sora, Riku was just rambling on aimlessly at this point. He was sure that whatever conclusion Riku came to here was right, or so he hoped with all this talking.

"Do you have a point, Riku?" Sora eventually cut him off.

"Yes. And that it, Kris split in two."

"And how did you come to this conclusion?"

"Were you not listening to me?"

"Maybe..."

Riku just shook his head. Only half of Kris' heart was saved, or so was his theory now. What would happen if they went after the dark side though? The assumption was it would add to the Kingdom Hearts tally and return to Kisatrix along with the half of her soul like Roxas if they managed to complete Kingdom Hearts. And they all thought Sora's situation with being split was complicated...

--

The trio plus Jack had gone ahead across the graveyard and through to the tree house, where the dark figure had escaped to in the midst of all Riku's rambling about theories. Riku didn't appear to be concerned though. How strong could this thing be? It was only like... a quarter of its total potential power.

He found his answer pretty quickly when the first room of the tree house collapsed on top of them all.

Fighting through some of the debris the four of them found themselves face to face with heartless Kris, and she seemed to have less emotion than Kisatrix. She just stared at them all through her blank, glowing yellow heartless eyes. Without any warning more mummies flew at them out of thin air, leaving Riku and Sora no choice but to fend them off with their keyblades. This wasn't good.

Riku was sure that Skyla had no contact with any part of Kisatrix's part, meaning that this was working completely independently of the Reorganization. This also meant that the insane amounts of heartless weren't yet Skyla's doing. And with all this thinking going on, he was really starting to get a headache.

Sora found a break in the heartless and dashed off ahead of the other three, after the Kris heartless. She had run up to the top of the tree house already, not having a chance to booby trap any of the other places in the tree house. That didn't stop her from sending insane amounts of heartless after them all though.

Sora was beginning to have problems just slashing through all the heartless anymore. Even when Riku and Kairi and Jack finally caught up it was a challenge just to not get pushed back from all the heartless.

It was quite a piece of time before they managed to get through absolutely every heartless on the boardwalk. Kairi had nearly fallen out of the tree at least twice, but her embarrassment was overshadowed by the fact that Riku had nearly fallen off five times by tripping over his ghost sheet several times. Sora and Jack seemed accustomed to fighting on the tree house boardwalk, but that didn't stop Sora from claiming all the spinning this high off the ground was making him dizzy.

The four of them looked around to find that there were no more heartless. Choosing Riku as the decoy, Kairi and Sora made him run ahead to see if anymore heartless would jump out randomly. It didn't exactly help his self esteem with the costume on.

--

Riku managed to run all the way to the top, ahead of everyone. No more heartless had magically popped out, meaning either the world was out of heartless or Kris' heartless was ready for a fight. They favoured the idea that the world had simply run out of the heartless, seeing as they had taken out so damn many of them.

In the largest room of the tree house base formerly owned by Oogie Boogie, the heartless of what used to be Kris sat there waiting.

Jack was relieved to see that there were no obvious attempts to resurrect the former owner of this tree house. Sora reasoned it was because only having primary instincts the heartless was simply not smart enough to attempt such a challenge. Riku had the same conclusion, but entirely different reasons behind it.

With this primary instinct Sora was so sure this heartless had too much of, it sprung from its frozen glaring position to attack Kairi, who appeared to be the weakest. This was a miscalculation on her part though and Kairi hit her head on with the keyblade she currently had.

Despite being tired, Kairi was having a ton of fun with this whole concept of journeying. Harder and harder she managed to strike the heartless over and over again. The heartless only seemed annoyed with the attempts however, and as soon as she got in a shot Kairi was sent flying out of the room and off the side of the boardwalk outside.

"KAIRI!" Both Riku and Sora screamed at the same time, turning away from the heartless in order to see if she was alright.

Jack stopped them from just completely running out of the room however.

"You need to deal with this heartless; I'll go check on her. Chances are she fell onto one of the boardwalks below." Sora and Riku just nodded as he ran down to get their friend.

Before they could even turn back to the heartless it had jumped to attack Riku, sending him flying but fortunately it was into a wall this time. Sora took the distraction as an opportunity to attack the heartless, but a missed attempt almost hit Riku and they both determined that it was picking up on their fighting style.

Sora decided to switch and use two keyblades to give them a bit more of an advantage. Kris' heartless just stared them down with her cold heartless eyes, waiting for them to make the first move this time. Neither Sora nor Riku could decide how to go about attacking it.

Eventually they gave each other a small nod each, signaling that both of them should attack at the same time. Of course, they'd have to be careful they didn't run into each other again, but that shouldn't be a problem.

It threw the heartless for a loop this time, causing her to get hit by two out of three keyblades. Along with the damage Kairi had inflicted the combined damage of two keyblades at once was the cause for her obliteration. Riku and Sora both sighed with relief as the heart rose, floating off in order to join Kingdom Hearts.

"How much do you think that will help them?" Sora asked, out of breath. That was a lot of heartless for one world, maybe for once the heartless wouldn't even be back for awhile.

"A lot." Was Riku's only response. He knew that Kisatrix was as good as three quarters complete at this point. What if the half that had been saved magically fell into darkness again? Defeating it would guarantee Kisatrix's wholeness. Unless there was another glitch of some sort.

"Kairi!" Sora remembered quickly as he ran out of the room and down the boardwalk.

"How does he have the energy...?"

--

"Haha, Skyla. You look like a pirate! Arr! Me matey!"

Elexi had insisted that the moment he fixed the ointment for Skyla's eye that he put it in and that she wear an eye patch to stop her from rubbing it out.

"You had better hope this is worth it, Elexi. I look ridiculous. How am I supposed to watch movies to help my eyes if I can't see out of one of them?" Skyla was once again so heavily annoyed with Elexi.

"You can watch them after your eyes have healed. Still, until then minimal spatial power usage or my vines will cut off your head's blood usage." Elexi's words were stern, it was the most serious he had managed to sound yet today, even when he was trying to sound serious. "So what's the plan?"

"Well, you're lucky we're going to Port Royal next. I think I can make some special people flip sides..."


	17. Chapter 17

"Lookit me Skyla! Yar!"

"That really is getting old..."

Since Skyla apparently wasn't allowed to use her own powers that this point in time, Elexi had taken her through a void portal to Port Royal. For the life of her she could not figure out why on earth Elexi wouldn't let her void portal herself places, those types of nobody-specific powers were not directly connected to the elemental based attacks.

Upon arriving in port, Elexi had immediately run off to the nearest pirate ship. It was large, black and awful dark looking, and Skyla just somehow knew that it was probably haunted.

Now he was hanging off one of the larger masts and waving wildly down at her. She was just annoyed with him, and the fact that she felt open to attack with all her powers off. Plus she couldn't exactly defend herself without the elemental weapon, so she figured she'd have to pick up on a new weapon rather quickly.

"Hey Elexi!" She threw up one of two swords she had found on the ship there. It'd be more beneficial to practice with Kisatrix, but seeing as she was doing whatever on earth she was doing she'd just have to learn from Elexi.

Elexi happily caught the sword and gracefully fell back onto the deck of the ship, holding the sword ready. Skyla made sure her powers would stay off during the duration of the fight before giving the use of the sword a shot.

Elexi only defended her really sad excuses for attacks, knowing that she'd never held a sword before in her life. Kisatrix had often made him practice with her for the mere sake of keeping him distracted, so he knew a few things.

Without her space powers she often fell into Elexi's sword when she missed. It was so weird to deal in actual space she couldn't control, let alone use a weapon she'd never used before. Elexi just pulled back the sword when it looked like she was going to fall into it again, and tried to show her the proper stance required to be graceful while missing.

It took a lot of effort, but she eventually got a hang of it. She was now hitting Elexi's sword every time, although Elexi blocked it. He decided to try an attack, but realized that wasn't such a great idea when she had a little fit not expecting it causing him to hit her arm.

"Wow Skyla... you better hope they don't attack you, you'd pretty much be screwed." Elexi shook his head.

"It's not my fault, you gave me no warning!"

"Oh yes, and without your space abilities you're going to have so much more warning."

"Ah shut up." Skyla wiped the blood off her arm. It wasn't deep, but no doubt later she'd have Elexi all over her insisting on disinfecting it.

It didn't take long for them to pick up the fight again. Prepared this time, Skyla successfully blocked Elexi's attacks over and over and got in a few good shots of her own, one of them finally knocking the sword out of his hand. Elexi wouldn't tell her but he had loosened his grip on purpose for her sake.

Right when that happened something happened that Skyla would need her powers to prepare for.

"What are you too doing on my ship?"

Skyla hadn't heard the person come up behind her, and the shock of being snuck up on made her shutter and jump and trip and fall over the side of the ship into the water.

"Oh she's so doomed..." Elexi mumbled to himself before looking at what had scared her overboard. A very familiar pirate was standing in the moonlight, and Elexi quickly recognized him from going through some of Skyla's files. "Jack Sparrow, right?"

"That's Captain Jack Sparrow, captain of this here Black Pearl!"

"Oooohhhh..." Elexi quickly remembered what he had read in the files in regards to Jack's part in what had happened with the Organization XIII. Based on Skyla's original plan, this was going to get complicated.

After a mess of a time getting back onto the ship without use of her powers, Skyla was twitching insanely. She could still only see out of one eye with the eye patch, and now it was itchy.

\

"Who in the hell are you and what are you doing sneaking up on people?"

--

Sora, Riku and Kairi arrived in Port Royal to instantly see the pirate ship they knew so well.

"Jack's here!" Sora yelled excitedly and ran off ahead. Riku and Kairi were tired however, thinking that Sora was absolutely insane for even having half the energy he did. Riku didn't remember journeying to be this long. Then again he couldn't complain so long as he wasn't wearing that giant ghost sheet anymore.

"Do we have to run after him?" Kairi complained.

"I'm going to, I have a bad feeling. Just don't get yourself killed on the way, okay?"

--

Onboard the ship, Skyla was now having a rather odd battle of wits with this pirate.

"So what you're saying is that you wish to use this pirate ship as means to reach the treasure?"

"For the last time, I'm not after treasure!"

"But you said you were searching for something, and to require a ship for such said searching would mean that you are searching for treasure."

"You, sir, are quite clearly drunk. I am not searching for treasure; I am searching for a means to get my damn heart back so that I can have a real temper tantrum at you!"

Elexi had to admit that even though she didn't technically have a temper it was awful short. She pulled off pretending to have a temper flawlessly. When wondering why he'd always remember those idiots in his class whom she had those fits at. She must have always been such an angry person.

"You know what guys--"

"SKYLA!" Elexi was cut off by Riku as he ran onto the ship. Because the entrance to the ship was on Skyla's blind side she once again got scared and shuttered and tripped and fell, this time preventing herself from falling into the water by means of grabbing onto the side of the ship. She was still wet from falling in before and wasn't interested on restarting the drying process.

Riku found this behaviour very odd for Skyla. Not only did she have an odd eye patch but she was jumpy as hell and didn't even appear to hear him or Sora coming. Normally even without sound she would know several minutes before they arrived.

Elexi was rolling his eyes at Skyla again. Noticing that Sora already had he keyblade out, he quickly devised a plan to make Skyla's original plan so much easier.

"Hey Sora, how would you like to have a little sword fight with Skyla?"

Skyla, who was still recovering and hanging onto the side of the ship like she were going to fall off the face of the earth if she let go, glared at Elexi. Sora and Riku also stood in a slight state of shock at the proposition, and Sora picked up on the fact there was a catch before Riku even did.

"Okay, what are the stakes you're thinking of?" He asked coolly, aiming to impress Kairi with his delusional state of awesome as she arrived.

"Very perceptive, Sora." Elexi smirked, and Skyla looked more relaxed now that she knew there was a method to his madness. Not that they were going to win this bet, but it was nice to know Elexi was using his brain.

"If Skyla wins," Skyla let out a little sound of 'yea right' before Elexi was able to continue, "Riku has to join our side, at least temporarily."

That wasn't the way that Skyla had originally planned on carrying the whole 'get Riku to join our side to kill the heartless and help Kingdom Hearts while stifling Sora' plan, but she supposed it would probably be more effective than her plan anyway.

"And if we win?" Riku wasn't too concerned with losing, but there had to be something in this for them.

"Skyla's powerless at the moment, incase you can't tell." Elexi pointed out that now that Skyla had regained her vertical base she was swaying side to side awkwardly, "She stays with you, what you do with her is whatever you want until she regains use of her powers."

The first question that came to Riku's mind was about how she lost her powers in the first place... but he assumed that there was something wrong with her, seeing as the eye patch probably wasn't part of a costume she had put on to come here. What on earth were they going to do with a powerless nobody? He already had all the files he needed memorized. What was Elexi thinking?

Skyla was also wondering what Elexi was thinking. She didn't very much appreciate being used as not only a bargaining chip but the tool used to compete in the bet. Her logic told her he had lost his mind probably; there was no way the Reorganization was going to get very far without her around. Sure, Elexi was smart and Kisatrix was calm, but if the keyblade wielders had a brain they'd just send Elexi a cake or a large cookie and the entire castle would fall to pieces.

Sora didn't know any of this. He assumed this was just a great opportunity to gain the upper hand over the Reorganization. He'd made his decision without even stopping to consult Riku on the pros and cons of taking this wager.

"You're on."

--

Kisatrix and Damayon were in the middle of drawing the final drafts of what the new castle was going to look like upon completion. Ray and Mirra had gone off to find Skyla, but whenever they came back to check in they claimed to be unable to find her.

After awhile Kisatrix clued in that they had gone off somewhere and had forgotten to mention where. Skyla was powerless so long as Elexi was around so she had simply assumed she'd be castle-bound until doctor Elexi gave her the thumbs up to use her powers.

Neither Elexi nor Skyla knew that they were redesigning the castle yet, that was a slight concern. Knowing both them, especially powerless Skyla, one of them would do something irrational and Skyla wouldn't be able to build the castle.

"Okay, time for some world searching. We've got to find one or the other, and if that one is Elexi we need to shake out of him where Skyla is."

--

Sora and Skyla stood face to face. Sora had assumed the stance that was prepared for battle, while Skyla simply stood with the sword held limply in her right hand. She'd never learned the proper stance, nor did she care.

Before they even got to this point Skyla had insisted that everyone, including Elexi and Jack, stand on the higher part of the deck so there was no chance for a sneak attack. All partied involved had already agreed that if a party attempted to blindside any member that party instantly lost. Then they decided that Jack was on Sora's side, to clear up the slightly drunken ramble that issue had caused.

"You ready to lose?" Sora teased, "You should take your stance you know..."

"You want me to dance?"

"No. Battle stance. With your weapon ready. You don't have much sword experience do you?"

"Hey, that's not fair! I have half an hour's worth of experience, more than enough to beat you!"

Riku was still trying to figure out her normal weapon type. He'd now ruled out that it was any sort of sword or katana or dagger. Well, it might have still been a dagger, depending on her normal fighting style.

Sora and Skyla continued aimlessly yelling at each other, neither of them actually making any sense to the other anymore. Riku and Elexi were annoyed; it seemed that Sora would refuse to start the battle until Skyla took a proper battle stance.

"Skyla!" Elexi yelled from sitting on top of the helm, "Pretend you're defending!"

With that little hint Skyla held up her sword like she would if she were blocking one of Elexi's light blows. The moment she looked ready Sora was all over her with his keyblade. She found this advantage slightly annoying and unfair, Sora had been fake sword fighting all his life and now he had the advantageous weapon.

"Wow, she's not bad..." Riku commented, watching Skyla successfully defending all of Sora's attacks, and even managing to retaliate a couple times.

"Ha, she's improved since fifteen minutes ago..." Elexi couldn't believe that she'd gone from falling into swords nearly getting herself killed in very light combat to going into full out combat with a very experienced person and not getting herself nearly killed in that short of time.

Elexi could swear that she was using her powers. Looking carefully however he easily saw that there was no way that was possible, as her eyes practically glowed when she was calculating space. Her one visible eye was such a dull violet you'd swear they were gray if you didn't know better.

Elexi then turned upon hearing the faint sound of a void portal opening behind the group on the upper deck.

Kisatrix did not look happy. Not that she ever looked happy, but the look was so sour it reminded Elexi of rotten milk. Mirra was with her, still not used to the portal travelling she shook out her head, annoyed.

"We've got to stop doing that..."

"You'll get used to it." Kisatrix's voice was just so flat. "What are you guys doing?"

"Wagering on a sword fight!" Elexi said happily, pointing at the fight below between Sora and Skyla.

"Skyla?" Kisatrix's voice picked up as she ran to the railing to make sure it was her and not just someone who looked ridiculously like her. "Since when can she use a sword? She can't use a sword! WHY IS SHE USING A SWORD?"

"Relax, she's powerless and we're betting to get Riku on our side temporarily."

"And if she loses?" Kisatrix was analyzing Skyla's ability now. She was defending and not getting hit, but her technique was horrible and if she got even slightly tired she'd fumble easily. It didn't look like she was going to win.

"She hangs out with Sora's group until they reach the World That Never Was."

"WHAT? NO!" Kisatrix spun around in anger, hitting Elexi hard with her arm and knocking him over, causing him to land on his head, "Skyla needs to come back and build the redesigned castle you dimwit! She cannot win this battle you loony idiot! What are we going to do now? She's going to lose and we're going to be screwed! ROYALLY SCREWED! You should have come to check before you guys left! Do either of you ever think ahead? Oh dear god I have to interfere! Oh, but I bet Mr. Genius here already put the stipulation that whoever interferes loses!"

Elexi was sitting on the ground rubbing his head and Kisatrix stood there rambling to herself in a panic. How was he supposed to know that all that was going to happen?

"Who's refereeing?" Kisatrix asked, calmer now.

"Jack Sparrow over there. He's more or less a third party."

"Okay."

Before Elexi could ask what she was going to do, Kisatrix had her sword in her hand as she jumped down onto the lower deck where the fight was taking place. Without any hesitation she attacked Skyla's blindside, cutting her arm wide open and causing her to scream and fall over, freaked out as hell.

Captain Jack Sparrow had no idea who's side Kisatrix was on, having her just shown up. He had to make the call based on how awake he was, and considering he was drunk his judgment wasn't great.

"The winner is the lovely short tempered red haired girl."

Everyone on the deck was just staring in awe, along with Sora. None of them were sure what just happened.

"Let's go. Come on Riku." Kisatrix was back in calm, literally emotionless mood, making herself and now unconscious Skyla disappear in two void portals.

Elexi eventually got a hold of himself, still not sure where the logic behind that was.

"Um... right!" He opened a void portal and used a vine to force Riku through it, and gently pushed the reluctant Mirra through it too.

--

"What was that?" Elexi asked Kisatrix while he spent time disinfecting Skyla's wound. Kisatrix hadn't even been careful about going about it. She had just attacked full force, they were lucky Skyla's arm didn't just fall off.

Skyla was still very out of it. She wasn't really made for fights like that, let alone being blindsided by someone who was supposed to be on her side. Elexi was glad she had passed out again, some of the rambling that was going on didn't even sound like English.

"Simple ref tactic. Jack didn't know whose side I was on, by attacking Skyla I made it look like I was on Sora's side, therefore giving the win to Skyla." Kisatrix was pretty proud of herself for that one.

"You could've been more careful... if we hadn't gotten out right away I'd probably have to cut off her arm here..."

"And if it didn't look real, even drunk Jack would've picked up on the trick. What matters in all plans are now working, whereas that one bet would've screwed two or three plans up easily." Kisatrix went off to put the finishing touches on the blueprints they were working on.

Elexi was more or less very pissed with Kisatrix at the moment. Something like that should have been run by someone before just going ahead with it.

Not long later Riku came around. Elexi had thrown him into a couple walls upon returning, to relieve stress and such. Now that his head wasn't hurting anymore he was in the middle of being curious.

"Is she okay?" He was trying not to sound concerned, but it was pretty hard with such a question.

"I can't believe you care." Elexi shook his head, cleaning up the medical supplies he had laid out anywhere. "If you really absolutely just have to know, she'll be fine, but she'll also be quite out of it for awhile. The good news is when she wakes up she will be able to turn her powers on again. I don't recommend being here when she wakes up, I can just see things blowing up now..." He walked past Riku on his way out. He had to go check on what Kisatrix and the others were up to.

Elexi paused a moment before leaving Riku's earshot.

"On second thought, stay with her. Life would be wonderful if you got blown up."


	18. Chapter 18

"Crazy Kisatrix being all weird like that..."

Things weren't looking so great for the Reorganization. Elexi was in a fit, still mad at Kisatrix and wishing Skyla were awake. Even he wasn't even sure why he was angry with Riku, but the fact that his opinion was that Riku had feelings for Skyla was probably part of it.

He assumed he was wrong about the whole Riku thing though. He couldn't truly assess how others felt since his range of emotions in his memory wasn't great.

What he needed to do now was monitor the heartless flow into Kingdom Hearts. Skyla needed a full update the moment she woke up, and he needed to make sure that Damayon was doing his job.

--

Damayon was sort of doing his job. He and Mirra were slaying the heartless he summoned left right and centre, but when Kisatrix came back in an odd mood they both got distracted.

Ray didn't seem as concerned about his sister. Contrary to what he had already seen, this mood she was in proved that she still had the ability to remember how to react to things humanly. It was a relief to him that his sister's memories kept Kisatrix from being an entirely different person all together.

--

Sora, Kairi and Jack had begun to deal with a massive amount of heartless the moment that Elexi managed to disappear. In Sora and Kairi's opinions, this was getting quite old.

They slashed left and right, and right and left. Kairi fell off the ship more than once, and there was one point where the ship was so crowded with heartless Sora had suggested setting it on fire to kill them all off. Jack's reaction to that suggestion wasn't exactly supportive.

Jack wasn't doing too badly on his own. Sure, he was drunk and quite often shouted out some random profanity, but most his attacked managed to hit at least something. Sora wished Kairi's hair weren't red though, it seemed to attract Jack's attacks to her.

After a long, long while, the heartless finally thinned out and disappeared. It was a relief for everyone, including Jack who had simply fallen over unconscious and drunk as soon as it was over.

"Umm... Thanks for your help Jack?" Kairi went over to see if he was still alive from all that.

"Bring me my jar of dirt, love." He mumbled unintelligibly. Kairi looked at Sora in a way that asked if this was normal; Sora just shook his head at him.

"He'll be fine Kairi. I think that other than there being far too much alcohol in this world, that there's no longer a problem. Shall we leave?"

--

Sora and Kairi decided that without Riku, it would be best to go somewhere safe for contemplation of everything that was now going on.

Upon arriving back in Midnight's Light to consult Leon and his group about what was now going on, they were both surprised to see that the fight with the heartless had broken out all over again. Sora could've sworn it was a case of deja-vu, and Kairi looked like she was going to be sick from seeing this all over again.

Without thinking long on the matter, they both dived into battle once again. Sora really hoped that Leon had more of that wonderful drink after, it somehow made him feel better. Kairi didn't want Sora on that much caffeine again.

This time the heartless seemed to disappear faster and easier than before. The logical reasoning behind that was because they were the Reorganization's heartless and not as heavily researched the developed as the heartless that were created specifically in this world. Although a couple of those showed up too, clearly the problem here wasn't completely over and done with.

--

Upon completion of the task, Sora sat drinking the highly caffeinated drink Leon kept giving him. Kairi was now grumpy, remembering how awful Sora was before.

"So where's Riku?" Leon asked, noticing that they were short one.

"We lost him in a bet." Sora yelled, seemingly happily. Kairi took his drink away while he wasn't looking at it. Leon was just staring in a way that suggested that he thought they were losing their minds.

"It's not quite like that. We lost him in a bet, but they cheated." Kairi clarified, and Leon's look of belittlement stopped.

"And what were you guys supposed to get if you won?"

"Their leader." Sora was now looking around for his missing drink. His attention span seemed to shift every now and then. Leon looked at Kairi for confirmation on what Sora had just said.

"Yes. Their leader is currently powerless apparently. One of their own members attacked her to get Sora disqualified."

"Have you guys been locking the doors to the worlds as you fix the heartless problems with them?"

Sora and Kairi froze in place, realizing that they hadn't been. Sora smacked his head down on the table in front of him, clearly disappointed in himself.

"Well, come back when you do and we'll fix your problem with Riku. It shouldn't take long."

--

Elexi was amazed when he got to the accessible version of Skyla's control room. She had a second one, only accessible by her spatial powers, but her open Kingdom Hearts work was all in this room.

According to the map of worlds that they had spread the darkness to, none of the worlds had been locked after Sora had seemingly fixed the problem. Immediately he sent out as many heartless as were available to the Reorganization at the time to these worlds Sora had already been to.

Looking down at the Kingdom Hearts count, he was disappointed when he saw that they only had sixty thousand hearts towards it. He made a note that Skyla had to go out and reassess the damage to Kingdom Hearts, in order to make a second calculation. He really didn't want to have to deal with the task of getting half a million hearts; that was just outlandish at this speed.

According to some of the charts, the Reorganization had about fifty thousand disposable heartless, which would multiply as they caused havoc in the worlds. He assumed Damayon's limit was also capped. It was a problem, because there was only so much not spreading the darkness anymore could do. He estimated the current cap was one hundred fifty thousand heartless.

"Skyla, wake up soon..." This whole concept of being temporary leader and making decisions was beginning to bother him. How Skyla dealt with this he had no idea. Even without emotion he could feel the stress building up. What if something went wrong? It was on his head. Skyla always consulted with him whenever she was unsure of a decision, but the only person he could consult with right now was Kisatrix or Damayon...

"Argggghhh..." He moaned as he purposely fell over onto the floor. He needed a break, Skyla to wake up, Kisatrix to make more intelligent decisions that didn't put him in a stressful position, and possibly a cookie.

--

Elexi was going to be pleased with the fact that Skyla had finally woken up. But she wasn't in a good mood.

Riku hadn't left the room, not that he was supposed to be concerned but he supposed the emotional attachment was to be expected having spent so much time here. Yes, that seemed logical.

The first thing Skyla did upon regaining her vertical base was rip the eye patch off and turn her powers back on. He flung the eye patch at Riku as hard as she could and purposely rammed her head into the wall.

Riku was just staring at her. She seemed to be doing worse now than before.

Skyla sighed and decided to explain what had happened to Riku so that she wouldn't appear to be acting so stupid. She went through the whole process of Damayon and his group joining forces with him, and the fact that Elexi had ordered her not to use her powers until she regained eyesight and stopped going blind.

Riku remembered something from the ship about Kisatrix going on about her needing to build something. Upon thinking about it for a moment, Skyla determined that maybe that wasn't something Riku needed to know about. Part of that was because she didn't actually know what was going on with that, and partly because if Kisatrix was designing it as a surprise for the keyblade wielders Riku didn't need to know about it and tell Sora all about it.

"I don't know anything about building anything, Riku-"

"OH MY GOODNESS SKYLEXIA YOU'RE ALIVE I AM SO FILLED FULL OF PRETEND HAPPY!" Elexi had suddenly burst into the room, wrapping his arms around her into a tight hug that only managed to make her look even grumpier.

"Hello, Elexi. You're hurting my arm."

Elexi let go of Skyla, laughing nervously. He knew she was going to be in a bad mood.

"Walk with me." She signaled for Elexi and Riku to follow her as she set off towards the control room. Elexi followed all hyperish, trying to sort out all the temporarily leadership happenings in a couple words. Riku also followed, although not sure why he was signaled to. "What's going on?"

"Sora forgot to lock the worlds, so I've dispatched the fifty thousand heartless in our arsenal to those worlds which have no yet been locked. I've also sent more heartless to the worlds they haven't yet gone to, in hopes of extending our arsenal. I think we need to look for _his_ research Skyla, even with Damayon's help we'll barely have a third of what we need."

"You know what you have to do then Elexi, I refuse to go back there."

Elexi simply nodded and broke off in another direction, leaving Riku confusedly following Skyla.

"And how are you, Riku?"

"I'm... fine I guess, although am I technically officially kidnapped now?"

"Not at all. You're temporarily on our side, remember?"

Riku thought for a moment to remember when that fact was mentioned. He blamed Sora for this now, although even with Skyla's apparently high trust level in him he highly doubted he'd be directly facing anyone.

"Okay, I'm on your side, what does being on your side entail?"

It seemed like he blinked and ended up in a completely different universe. He stopped walking abruptly and took a look around. He'd been around the castle a few times but had never seen this.

"This is my private control room." Skyla went over and sat behind her giant desk. "It's only accessible by means of my space powers. I need your help with something, since you've previously experience with the darkness. I'd like to run a little experiment." She leaned on her arms on the desk, smiling like she had a secret.

--

Elexi had taken a left turn into a void portal and came out in Midnight's Light. Not the main squares however, he'd gone ahead to the remains of the labs destroyed by Skye's experiment.

He frowned looking around. The labs had received more damage than should have been capable by that experiment, meaning that there had been further experimental failures afterwards, no doubt also caused by the king in order to move the labs and start pure darkness research.

With Elexi's amazingly amazing observation skills, it didn't take him long to find the hidden door to where these secret labs were moved.

"What fun, secret labs that not even a high ranking Profs like Skye know about. How am I supposed to find secret heartless files down here?" Sure, he was mumbling to himself, but it was always fun to pretend he was in a movie.

He carefully tiptoed down the stairs into the underground lab, taking in every detail he possibly could. He hoped since the king's disappearance the lab had been abandoned, but as he made it further and further down the stairs he found that hope to be just a dream.

Since the staircase spiraled downwards, he was able to carefully observe from the shadows of the stairwell. People were wandering around, seemingly aimlessly with all sorts of files and papers. All with white trench coats and papers. He wondered if he could pull off a disguise here to avoid unnecessary death...

Quickly and as silently as he could he dashed up the stairs, and back to the lab he and Skyla had occupied during their studies. Sorting through some of the rubble, he found exactly what he was looking for.

"Too easy..."

--

"Good evening, sir." One of the many lab scientists in the underground labs addressed Elexi.

Elexi had made the stunning observation with his awesome attention to detail that the coats and I.D. badges the people in the underground lab used were exactly the same as his and Skyla's when they worked in the University above. So it was a simple matter of grabbing the explosion-save box that Skye had designed and retrieving the lab coat and his backup I.D. from it.

"How're you?" Elexi said in a conversational tone. It was a lot harder than he remembered.

"I'm fine, thank you. Where are you headed..." the person looked down at the I.D., completely fooled and not looking at the date it was issued, "Eli?"

"I'm looking for the main darkness lab; I've a couple third party papers to file." That was either going to get him far in this little plan, or it was going to get him caught.

"Ah, of course! We've been waiting for those files, with the king's disappearance things don't go through the castle as quickly anymore." The lab tech lead the way down the hall, 'Eli' clearly being a little lost.

This was almost working too easily. He was looking around as inconspicuously as was possible, searching for details of something being amiss. Instead, he found a sense of jealousy, as these underground labs were even better than the state of the art ones that were built in the university. Even Skye's experiment wouldn't break these labs.

It disgusted him. Skye was a state of the art theologist and an amazing physicist. If they had have let her work down here he had no doubt in his mind that she wouldn't hesitate to help them.

Then he felt bad. Skyla wouldn't do that and he knew it. She was against this, and generally disliked her research being used by others. He'd have to apologize to Skyla later for making that assumption on her behalf. She'd have no idea why he was apologizing, but it was the right thing to do. Skyla didn't like who she was working at the University, how would she be any better working down here?

"Here we are." The lab tech opened the door with his I.D. card. Only then did Elexi notice that this person's I.D. had a barcode on the back, he'd have to be careful not to flip his around because the back of his was blank.

He was amazed once again as he walked into the records room, it being about five times the size of the original one in the University above. No one other than the lab tech seemed to be around; this could prove to be as easy as deceiving the lab tech.

"Lock it with your keycard when you're done." He left and the door closed behind him, leaving Elexi to carry out his task.

--

Elexi was going to have problems getting to the heartless files. So far in the vast library he managed to identify five different cameras. There didn't appear to be a camera facing the entrance to the room, so he was able to perhaps play a little trick.

Using his vines he carefully made them crawl up the wall towards the cameras, being careful to keep them out of the line of sight of any cameras. As soon as one was covered with the width of the vine, he moved on to another. Hopefully it was working to make whatever security area think that their cameras were malfunctioning, giving him a short amount of time to find the heartless files and get out of there.

His hopes were crushed when he heard an alarm go off.

"Damnit..." he sighed to himself, causing vines to grow up over the door. There was very little point in keeping the cameras covered so long as he was caught, so he simply went ahead and searched for the heartless files.

He was once again stifled when he noticed the existence of several more doors on the upper level of this library. He covered those in vines to prevent entrance to catch him as well, but so many doors with so many vines was starting to drain at his powers ever so slightly.

After about ten minutes of running around lost he finally found the row of the darkness files. He needed as many as possible, so using more vines he opened a void portal and started throwing them through.

Drawers opened, files got thrown, there was banging at every door in the place. He could feel his vines getting beat on like crazy, it wouldn't be long before they broke. He was running out of energy, in a panic he kept using the vines to throw the files into the void portal as he stumbled slightly dizzily towards it.

Right as he threw the last file in, one of the doorways were broken into. In a panic he tripped through his void portal, and the scientists got there right as the last few wisps of the portal had disappeared.

--

Elexi was pretty much beat by the time his vision started clearing.

"Wow, okay, that was a mess." He looked down at the giant pile of files he had managed to throw through the portal. Some of them were a little bent now, probably because he had been rolling around on top of them while dizzy.

Now that he looked at the massive amount of files he had collected he wasn't sure he needed so many. It would take Skyla hours to sort through these. Then again he didn't exactly have a lot of time to screen them.

"Wow, Elexi, great job!" Skyla had appeared in the door upon sensing that Elexi was back. "Tired are we? You should use your powers more, you seem very limited."

Elexi just scowled at her, although she was right. Beyond making roses pop up and throwing Skyla and Kisatrix around with his vines, he didn't use his powers outside battle much. It was limited; he should be exercising it more often.

"So, do you think this is enough to solve our heartless problem Skyla?"

"I think this is more than enough, we'll have our hearts back in no time."


	19. Chapter 19

"Ummm... Skyla, what kind of experiment is this supposed to be, exactly?"

Riku had agreed to go through with this little experiment, but he didn't expect it to be like this.

Skyla had made a replica of the outfit which he was wearing during his time in the darkness while he was so stupidly listening to Ansem and Maleficent, which she was now tailoring to fit him properly. Apparently he had grown, and therefore the picture in the file she had wasn't exactly a great reference. He did not miss the white thing that resembled a skirt.

What was odder about this process was that Skyla was disappearing and reappearing randomly. She'd be working on sewing a sleeve and disappear with it only half sewn and reappear again two or three minutes later. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew that standing still for that two or three extra minutes was incredibly painful.

Skyla was silent, but smiling, all throughout this process. She didn't seem to even hear Riku's original question, clearly more important things running through her mind.

"Skyla, seriously, what's this for?" He asked again once again when she finished. He had to admit, this was rather comfy now that it was made special to fit him.

"You'll get further instruction in a bit. All I can say is don't make me have to brainwash you, it's a simple experiment and you can go back to normal later." She smiled and disappeared yet again, leaving Riku trapped in the room apparently only accessible by her powers.

She came back a couple moments later, remembering that she had forgotten Riku, and took him back to the large room which Elexi had thrown all the files into.

Elexi was still there, and upon seeing Riku, his memories of similar situations of other people's humiliations kicked in and he fell to the floor laughing. The sight of him wearing the thing that looked like a skirt was made of pure genius.

"Wow, Riku. Realizing we're a girl now, eh?"

"Hey, I got no say in this outfit the first time, and I still don't have a say since apparently this is for some sort of experiment." Riku just glared at him. Maybe he'd shove a heart into Elexi's chest and make him wear the costume and see how he feels while he laughed his head off.

Riku then looked around at all the files in the room. There was enough here to fill an entire library. Some of them look sorted, while a majority of them lay in a mountain in the middle of the room. This must have been what Skyla was up to all those times she disappeared.

"I'll tell you my experiment as soon as we sort through these, Riku." Skyla was already back to using her powers to scan through files. As per Elexi's orders she was actually looking at them as opposed to overusing her powers on an atomic scale in order to detect where the ink was taking up space on the page, but she was using them to make them appear in different places.

Elexi was using his vines to carefully try to stack the mountain of files and keep the piles that Skyla had sorted from toppling over. It was quite a task, but a good way to exercise his powers. He wondered how he had managed to get so many files, he didn't seem to recall throwing quite this many through the portal.

"Where are all these from?" Riku stepped over to the very untidy part of the mountain of files, flipping one open to view the anatomy of one of the spider-type heartless they had taken on in Midnight's Light. "I've seen this before... these are heartless files?"

"I got them from the secret underground lab that Skyla and I had no clue even existed in Midnight's Light." Elexi sounded proud of his accomplishment.

"I suppose you know our story now, right?" Skyla had been keeping tabs on what Sora's group was doing in Midnight's Light. The whole heartless outbreak that occurred after the king's death was something she hadn't planned, but something that was highly beneficial to her none the less.

Riku just nodded in response to the question, knowing that Skyla would notice it. He found it hard to believe that when she had a heart Skyla was a high ranking researcher and University professor. She was so... not like that. Sure she was smart, but he had problems placing her there.

"What are you guys researching these heartless for?"

"It's a matter of we don't have nearly enough hearts to continue our quest to regain hearts, so we've got to finish this the artificial way." Skyla's tone was now bitter and unhappy. This wasn't what she wanted; she didn't even want to look at these files really. Some of the physical explanations of the heartless were clearly taken from her own research articles. Even without being able to care, the thought of her articles that she worked for months on being used in such a fashion, for that stupid king, made her stomach sick.

Elexi wasn't looking at the files, so he didn't yet know that his admission's thesis was used over and over again, especially on the botanical type heartless. It wasn't even that long of a thesis, and the fact that they could use it over and over would make Elexi sick too. It was just pissing Skyla off now.

"Yea, Elexi, why don't we leave this for later? It shouldn't take long; I need your help with the experiment."

Elexi looked at Skyla, and then at the pile of files. They'd been working at this for awhile now and the pile hadn't appeared to change very much at all. Something in the files must have been bothering Skyla, or, the fact that Riku was also going through the files was starting to worry her.

"Errrr... Sure Skyla. I'll go track down their location." Elexi left the room without another word, and made a note to ask Skyla about this later.

--

By now Sora and Kairi had finally redone all the keyholes, which had proven to be a larger challenge than expected because Elexi had realized their mistake before they did and sent all the heartless to these worlds.

Upon returning to Midnight's Light they were completely wiped, nearly collapsing onto the ground upon reaching Leon's house.

There was no doubt in Sora's mind as to why that had been so hard, the Reorganization was silly and, at times, far too outlandish to seem effective. They did however prove here that they weren't all insane fun and games, they were making their move.

"Everything locked?" Leon came out carrying two drinks, one for each Sora and Kairi. Sora eagerly took up the drink, downing the entire thing before Kairi even got a hold of hers. Kairi was so tired that she didn't even mind drinking the highly caffeinated substance.

"All the worlds we've been to at least." Sora sat on the couch and sighed. They needed Riku before they even considered going ahead to new worlds and dealing with the heartless there, no doubt the Reorganization had already laid their dark roots stronger than anywhere else they'd been yet.

Kairi eventually pulled herself up next to Sora, just as tired. If they didn't get Riku back soon they'd need to call in Donald and Goofy again.

"Well, I've good news for you both." Leon nodded to the window, where there was a large gathering of people standing around a small event going on. "Riku's here, and he doesn't look quite normal."

Sora and Kairi instantly looked out the window. Squinting very hard, they could see their friend quite clearly, wearing the outfit that Sora remembered from the first journey.

--

"ARGH, Elexi this place pisses me off so much!"

Skyla and Elexi were standing behind the platform Riku was posing on, hidden from the rest of the crowd. Although, if Skyla complained much more about being here her incessant screaming was going to draw attention to them.

Skyla hated Midnight's Light. She had already sworn never to step foot here again, and the fact that she was standing here with all the people that had forced her to use her insane range of knowledge in a profession she hated was driving her insane. The noise was messing with her head.

Elexi, while annoyed, couldn't exactly blame her. He disliked being here too, but it was mostly Skye's research that had been used for the darkness. Skyla had every right to not want to be here, but it wasn't his fault that this was where Sora and Kairi were going to come to next.

Fortunately, he had planned ahead a bit, pulling out of the bag of accessories required for the experiment a set of headphones attached to a music player. It wouldn't fix the fact that Skyla was here, but it would distract her to a certain extent. Already on the player was all the techno trance music Skye had enjoyed while performing large scale Physics experiments.

The moment that Skyla saw the familiar headphones she grabbed them and put them on. It was so nice to drown everything out, with her space powers she didn't really need any of her other senses. Although, Elexi would complain that she would lose her hearing ability. For a short time it wouldn't matter.

Meanwhile, atop the platform Skyla had brought with her, Riku was making a sad attempt to make a speech of the script Skyla had given him to memorize in about two minutes. He did the best he could; he knew Skyla had forgotten that he couldn't pick up information as quickly as she could.

"Embrace the revolution, darkness is the natural state of the world! Give up your hearts and help create the ideal world of Kingdom Hearts!" Truly, in Riku's opinion, if Sora couldn't pick up the fact that this was a poorly done act he was stupid. They both knew that if Riku were truly back in the darkness he wouldn't go recruiting, he'd just send a couple heartless to take the world by storm.

Then again, on the other side of the coin this world had already unconsciously accepted the darkness, so maybe this wouldn't look quite so insane.

Riku still didn't get the premise of this experiment. Skyla mentioned wanting to see Sora's reaction, but what truly was the point of that? Based on Skyla and Elexi's positioning it looked far more like a trap than a reaction based experiment.

It was just then he noticed Sora and Kairi pushing their way through the crowd. He looked down behind the platform, where Skyla and Elexi were starting to take notice to Sora's presence. What was going to happen next?

"RIKU! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Sora yelled from the ground. Looking straight down at him, Riku noticed that the platform was quite tall. Sora, even with his high jump ability wouldn't have a hope of jumping onto it. That was concerning him slightly, this was a trap of some sort.

Before Riku had a chance to wonder what such a trap was, he found Skyla had appeared behind him. He could hear the loud techno music radiating from the headphones, how was that not giving her the worst headache ever.

"Hio Sora, how're you today sweetie?" Skyla waved down at Sora and Kairi both, only causing Sora to look far angrier with all this.

"Skyla, what did you do to Riku!?" Sora changed the question, clearly seeing that it was more likely that Skyla brainwashed Riku than it was Riku joined the darkness on his own.

"You're mistaken; Riku chose this path on his own terms. Say, how do you feel about that?" Skyla's tone was rather happy and sarcastic, although Sora couldn't really interpret it as such because he didn't know how that worked with nobodies.

"I feel that you're a liar Skyla!"

"Just as I thought..." Skyla mused to herself. There was no way that taking someone and turning them against him was going to work, not with a seemingly direct relation at least. That meant that going ahead to further worlds and possessing Sora's friends wasn't going to work if someone from the Reorganization stuck around to watch. "Thank you for participating in my little experiment Sora."

Skyla turned around, appearing to get ready to leave. Riku could hear Elexi snickering below, something was still up.

"Normally, this would be the point where I gave Riku back to you. However..." Skyla stopped mid sentence and held her hand slightly behind her. Riku saw no point to this, until he noticed that something was slightly shining, hung from an invisible belt on the back of her shirt. It wasn't long before this slightly shining invisible object was solid enough for Skyla to grab and hold to Riku's head, although Riku still couldn't tell what it was.

"I think that causing the absolute destruction of this world and everyone in it would be much more fun."

By the time Skyla had finished her sentence, the object held at Riku's head was visible enough to be identified as a very insanely complex looking gun.

The gun was basically a laser pointer mounted atop a machine gun. It was modified beyond belief, Riku couldn't even see where the ammo was loaded, but no doubt Skyla could just sub it in and out with her powers.

One thing he did notice however is that while it only had one barrel, there were two separate trigger to it. It suggested that the laser mark atop of it wasn't only used for aim. Seeing as Skyla was only holding the gun with one hand, aim clearly wasn't her main priority anyway.

"Whatdiya say Riku, ready to meet the true abyss?" Skyla smirked as the colour drained from Riku's face. Sora was throwing a fit below, and Kairi was simply freaking out. Looking down over the other side of the platform she saw Elexi waiting for the signal. Right now she only had one choice to make, and that was which signal to give.

--

Kisatrix and Ray were sitting around the blueprints of the new castle extension they were planning, Damayon and Mirra having opted out to help with the trap Skyla had called an experiment.

"What decision do you think Skyla made?" Ray asked in general passing, still measuring angles on the paper he was working on.

"I'm... not sure. I mean, she can't really feel anything anyway, but would she seriously kill Riku..." Kisatrix, while she had known Skyla for awhile, didn't know what was going to happen. No matter what happened option two was going to occur, but was killing Riku really worth it at this time was the question.

"Well, I want to look at this from a strategy standpoint." Ray took out a second piece of paper and started doodling something completely random and different.

"Say Skyla doesn't kill him, while we still outnumber them it become a matter of their odds are ever so slightly higher. Why would she give them 2:1 odds instead of 3:1 odds?"

"Because Skyla has false emotions Ray. We can't actually feel anything, which is why we force ourselves to." This was the third time Kisatrix had bothered explaining to her brother, it was starting to bother her.

Ray could see that this was beginning to get on Kisatrix's nerves, or what she had of them.

"Okay, now explain to me this whole concept of Kingdom Hearts and your specific heart."

"Well, I don't actually need to complete Kingdom Hearts to get my heart back. We have half my heart back right now, Skyla managed to catch it before it went into the actual Kingdom Hearts, which I adore her for. The problem is, there is no way of knowing if the other half is in darkness or light."

This all disappointed Ray. He was so sure that by stealing Damayon's keyblade to kill Kisatrix's heartless was going save her. Instead, it seemed as though it just messed it all up more.

"You didn't mess it up, Ray, if that's what you're thinking. The thing is, if you hadn't split it in two I'd have to wait for Kingdom Hearts just like Skyla and Elexi do." As far as she knew, both Elexi's and Skyla's real hearts were helping to keep Kingdom Hearts together at this moment. Skyla and Elexi didn't want their real hearts anyway, so there was no point in catching them before they entered Kingdom Hearts.

This relieved Ray a little. At least he hadn't been a complete burden. He did however wonder one thing...

"Kris, what if your heart already got sent to Kingdom Hearts without Skyla knowing?"

Kisatrix stopped her measuring the wall she was drawing, and sat completely still for what seemed like a ridiculous amount of time.

It hadn't crossed her mind before. She had just assumed that no one had found the other half of her heart yet. The heartless charts in Skyla's control room however were only estimates rounded to the nearest ten. What if there was a half of a heart inside Kingdom Hearts and they couldn't tell because of the rounding?

Kisatrix instantly got up and ran for the control room.

"What if that's true... am I doomed to wait too?"


	20. Chapter 20

"Skyla... please don't..."

Riku was staring down the barrel of a very scary looking machine gun, really worried at this moment. While he didn't see much point in pleading with someone who didn't have the ability to care, at this point it really didn't hurt to try.

Skylexia however didn't appear to be moving in her decision. The only thing she was waiting for was a signal from Damayon so she could give Elexi a signal. Her techno music was blasting in her ears, and was hearable within a considerable range since everyone had gone silent since the machine gun appeared.

Her eyes didn't move at all. At the moment she was trying to place Damayon, which was slightly more difficult with so much darkness in this world.

However, once Damayon summoned his keyblade as the signal the rest was automatic. Elexi saw the signal too, and his reaction to Skyla turning her gun to the crowd and shooting the really fast automatic gun was almost instant.

Using his powers, Elexi created a giant cage of vines to enclose the area, Mirra running around the outside of it making sure no one could escape through the not yet closed up exits. Before long everyone was trapped, Skyla just randomly shooting every which way as to cause more chaos. Only Riku seemed to notice that her shots didn't appear to be causing any real damage, they appeared to taper off as they reached the crowd.

It only then clicked in that even without any real damage occurring from Skyla's own hand, Riku was the only one able to attack her to stop all this right now.

Damayon was starting to spread his darkness through the vines and around the enclosed area. There wasn't much time here.

--

Kisatrix and Ray were now both in Skyla's main control room. Kisatrix was busy looking at stats, while Ray was just trying not to break anything.

"Kisatrix, what stat specifically are you looking for?" Ray was concerned; he had never seen his sister like this.

"I'm looking to see if there's a decimal numbered heart." Kisatrix flipped through some papers. Past records, present estimates and damage controls on Kingdom Hearts. She couldn't find anything to suggest that there was a half a heart inside Kingdom Hearts; the problem was that they were simply estimates.

"You would think damn Skyla and Elexi would find a way to actually measure hearts by now!" Kisatrix slammed down a pile of papers.

"Well, maybe that's because it's not there? You should check with Skyla later, she seems to know a lot about what goes on here and there." Ray grabbed Kisatrix's shoulders and sat her in the large rolling chair nearby. "I'm sure your heart is still out there."

"I really hope you're right..."

--

Riku had thought this through quite enough now.

Without much prior warning, he summoned the Way to Dawn keyblade and attacked Skyla with as smooth a motion as was possible for him at this moment.

Unfortunately, the fact that Riku moved at all gave Skyla more than enough time to sidestep his attack without seeming to put any effort into calculating it. In the same motion she caught Riku's arm and pulled him back up.

"When in the five minutes you were thinking about that did you ever think that was a good idea, love?"

Skyla quickly changed the force she was using to pull Riku up into a push to the ground again, and spun around to sidestep Sora who had apparently found the ladder to the top of the platform finally. Sora proceeded to trip over Riku and nearly fell off the side of the platform.

Right as Skyla was prepared to finish off Sora first, she was distracted by a scream only distinct to her in the distance. Her attention snapped up to where Mirra was standing, but because of the darkness and the vines she couldn't see what was going on outside the vines.

"Damayon!" Skyla called, and turned her back to Riku and Sora to leave.

Sora and Riku didn't like being shunned like that though, and without even consulting with each other they both ran up behind Skyla, who was clearly distracted by other matters. They also hit her too, until something neither could explain happened and they both missed although Skyla never appeared to change her path.

--

Below in the chaos, Kairi was having anything but fun.

Before running off, Sora had pointed out an opening in the vines, allowing her to escape to the outside of the vine enclosure.

Outside this enclosure, she had found Mirra and instantly engaged her in a fight. She remembered what happened last time, and decided that it was about time someone of the opposition died.

Kairi and Mirra were now locked a death brawl, Mirra's dagger not helping her as much as it normally would. Kairi was angry, and there was no stopping her.

Both girls were bleeding intensely. Mirra from the mouth, and likely had more than a few broken ribs. Kairi's arms were all cut up, but she had managed to avoid any blows to her torso. It was beyond Mirra how all her attacks were missing, maybe her heart wasn't really in it at this moment.

It wasn't long before Mirra's scream brought the attention of both Skyla and Damayon, but by this time Elexi had sealed up all the exits to the outside. Both of them looked around in the chaos to find him, but couldn't see him anywhere.

"This isn't going as well as I planned..." Skyla mumbled to himself. This large scaled mess was now the problem, and Sora and Riku wanted out now too.

"Can we break through it?" Sora was knocking on the vines, which seemed like a solid wall five feet thick, although definitely not that thick. Both Skyla and Riku shook their heads at the same time.

"Not by ourselves, at least." Riku was the one to answer the question, then he looked at Skyla, "Hey, can you see what's going on?"

Skyla's eyes were closed. Sometimes Elexi's vines negated her powers, especially now that Damayon's darkness was entwined with it. Right now, she was seeing small glimpses of the fight between Kairi and Mirra.

"It doesn't look good for Mirra... Kairi's not letting her get a hit... I'm pretty sure they're both bleeding, Kairi's injuries seem very minimal... seeing through the darkness here is making my head spin." Skyla slumped against the non-spiky part of the vine wall, clearly tired from trying to hard. "Damayon, find Elexi."

Damayon just nodded and ran off. Sora thought this would be a great time to attack her, but Riku stopped him.

"Sora, just because she's tired doesn't mean she's unaware." Riku knew that when she was distracted was when it was most dangerous to try and attack her. He had watched her and Elexi have little random fights; it was just suicide to try and attack her at this moment.

Riku and Sora got distracted when everything disappeared. Literally, everything was gone. The vine wall, the area of chaos. It was all replaced by an area Sora knew very well.

"Did they destroy the world!?" Sora yelled in shock, while Riku went and looked at the now unconscious Kairi. Damayon ran past Skyla and Sora both to check on Mirra, while Elexi ran to Skyla who had seemed to pass out. Sora felt a little left out here.

Only Sora seemed to notice that the new area they had seemingly magically teleported to was the End of the World, and the end of his first journey.

"Would someone please tell me what just happened to Midnight's Light?!"

"Relax." Elexi sighed to himself and at Sora. "Skyla used a spatial shift to bring us all here. Not an easy task, mind you."

"Elexi, Mirra isn't doing so well... what are we going to do?"

"Don't worry." Elexi raised his arm to open a void portal, lifting Skyla up and having her lean on his shoulder. "Let's go."

"What about them?" Damayon nodded towards Sora, implying all three of them, while lifting Mirra up onto his own shoulder.

"They'll get out just fine." Elexi smiled and shooed Damayon through the portal, having it shut behind him.

Sora just stared blankly at the place the portal had just disappeared from for several minutes, while Riku was insuring that none of Kairi's injuries were life threatening. Sora snapped out of it eventually and ran over to them to also check on Kairi.

"She's fine." Riku answered Sora's question before he could even ask it. "She passed out from tiredness most likely. I wouldn't worry about her, a couple cuts on her arms, nothing a little it of rest won't fix."

Riku now had a chance to look around the End of the World. It was an empty desolate place at the moment; he had witnessed this place himself. Ansem had managed to create an illusion of the former Destiny Islands here before, but he assumed that someone would have to control the darkness to achieve such an effect. He wondered how they were supposed to get out of here.

Sora seemed to know which way he was going though, and after hoisting Kairi onto his back he trekked off in a seemingly random direction. Riku just decided to follow, seeing little harm in it.

--

Back in the World that Never Was, there was something going on that was going to tear some people apart.

"Ray, calm down. She's not gone yet, Elexi's going to have a look at her."

Damayon was currently in the middle of calming Ray down. Both Mirra and Skyla were out to lunch; the thing was that Mirra was headed towards a longer-term nap.

"You just told me that she's dying, Damayon! How am I supposed to be calm? Of course, you're alright because you're love is only missing half a heart at this moment!"

"Now, wait Ray." Kisatrix cut in, "Damayon said that there's a chance she could die, you're ruling out the fact that Elexi is looking at her. Elexi is a wonderful doctor, and I would really like it right now if you would give off some positive energy here. I don't want to lose Mirra anymore than you do, she is my best friend."

Ray sighed, knowing that Kisatrix was right. Elexi had proven with Skyla's eye that he was a good doctor, and with his botanical background he was capable of making all sorts of effective medicines. Maybe Mirra would be alright.

"Now come on both of you, Skyla will wake up cranky if we keep arguing here." Kisatrix nodded at Skyla asleep in the corner. "Whatdiya say we go sort that giant pile of files for her?"

Ray and Damayon both sighed in dismay, but reluctantly agreed and followed Kisatrix to the room full of files.

--

Inside Skyla's mind at the moment were all sorts of different calculations, Physics and otherwise. Memories of different classes she had taught were tormenting her, they were memories she's sooner forget.

"_So it can be proven that the horizontal velocity is independent of the vertical velocity."_

_Professor Skye finished up a lesson she was giving her placement class on the areas of general Physics that were currently being looked into. Her hope was that like herself, one of her students would question this theory right here this second._

_Sure enough, one of the students in the back row had his hand up, waving it hyperly. A quick glance at the seating chart allowed her to call upon him._

"_Yes, Eli?"_

"_Just a question, professor, but wouldn't taking into account gravity make the horizontal velocity dependent on the vertical change caused by the gravity?"_

_Skye just smiled. Sure, it wasn't the best wording in the world, but it was exactly the question she was looking for._

_She had been watching this student for awhile really. She had always forgotten to check his name, but now that she could remember it she knew Eli, like herself, was an abstract thinker. She often heard him talk to his few friends about flowers and such, so maybe it wasn't the exact same type of abstract thinking..._

"_That is an excellent question, Eli. Does anyone else share in Eli's little theory?"_

_The rest of the class stood silent. How were any of these students supposed to become great researchers if they couldn't think outside the box and question everything they were told?_

"_Well then, Eli, as opposed to answering your question here and confusing the rest of the class, how about you stick around after class? I asked the exact same question myself the first time I heard it."_

"_Sounds great!" His voice was enthusiastic. While his interest didn't seem to lie in this field, he would make an excellent researcher._

_The rest of the class went by uneventfully. Skye shared the theories as mandated by the university, nobody said a word. It seemed like such a long time before the class was finally over._

_Eli had followed her to her office, where Skyla decided she was curious as to what Eli was doing in a Physics class._

"_You're right, I hate it here." Eli frowned, clearly unhappy. "Both my parents worked for the university, they want me to at least have a Master's degree, even if I never find a theory to get my Doctorate._

_On her computer, Skye had managed to pull up Eli's profile. It seemed as though he was a first year, it would be four more years in his field to even get a Bachelors'. She wondered if she could help him out._

"_How much do you really like your classes?"_

"_I hate classes." Eli was staring at her like she was crazy. She wasn't his student guidance councilor, why would she care?_

"_What if I told you that I can get you your Master's by the end of the year?"_

--

It was at that moment Skyla jerked awake.

Her head spun several minutes before realizing where she was. The last thing she remembered from before her dream was a quick glimpse of the End of the World. That wasn't where she had been aiming for...

She head snapped up towards a nearby door the moment that her powers kicked back in, hearing a familiar sobbing sound she had only heard the day Eli had a breakdown in the middle of a chemistry experiment.

She got up to go check it out, when Elexi came flying out of the door and nearly knocked Skyla over. Skyla, being careful not to freak out and kill him by accident, tried to look concerned. What could have brought this on?

"Oh, how's Mirra?" Mirra seemed to be Elexi's cue to cry harder. Skyla was wrong, this was worse than Elexi's breakdown in the middle of a chemistry experiment.

"I'm such a horrible doctor! She's... she's..."


	21. Chapter 21

**((Note: This chapter was up, but I had to rewrite part of it due to a continuity error. So I added a bit, everyone who already read this should read it again and forget what they read before because there's a ton of little things I changed.))**

"Elexi, please stop crying. Ray, no don't bang your head on that wall. Kisatrix, quit pretending to cry, I know you want to but that's just bad dude..."

Chaos had broken out, and it was bad. Despite Elexi's best efforts, Mirra's injuries were far too severe and Elexi had to give up on her. Ray was taking it particularly hard, and Elexi was freaking out because he had never lost anyone he had ever tried to help before. Kisatrix cared, and really wanted to show her sorrow, but her attempt to cry made Skyla want to throw her into the water.

The thing with Ray was, like Damayon he was in love. Seeing as it was rather difficult to be in love with his own sister, he was in love with Mirra. Before the whole darkness situation that started all this, he and Mirra had a casual relationship, which they more or less lost when they were forced to run after Damayon every which direction. It wasn't like they got very much downtime other than when Skyla had beat them all to hell.

He was hoping that after all this was over that he and Mirra could pick up where they left off. Sure, they had little in common, but that didn't seem to matter usually, other than the odd argument over whether pizza or lasagna was better.

This just totally ruined all the plans that Ray had. He had pictured himself and Mirra getting married in a couple years and having two or three kids, and living next to his sister, Damayon, and the four kids they had planned to have.

Kisatrix had known Mirra even longer than Ray had really; they had met in Kindergarten when Ray was in his 'I hate my little sister' phase. Since becoming a nobody she had never really learned how to tap into the fake emotions based on memories like Skyla and Elexi had. She knew she wanted to cry, she just had no idea how. Instead, she just ran her memories of Mirra through her head over and over, trying hard just to feel something.

Elexi, while not having such a direct relation to Mirra, was having an absolute breakdown. If it looked anymore real Skyla was going to have to kick him out of the Reorganization for having a heart.

Elexi had actually had a medical certification for awhile, being granted a honourary degree from the university because he knew how to treat absolutely every little problem with different plants. It didn't make his parents happy however; they found his obsession with flowers and plants to be a foolish waste of his life and insisted he go and get a physics degree as that was 'more useful in today's world'.

The short time he had actually applied his medical degree he was considered to be something of a miracle worker, as no one else knew how to treat things like he could. He had never lost anyone until today.

Sure, there were rational explanations. He had never dealt with keyblade inflicted injuries before, and it had been quite some time before he got to take a look at the damage. The truth was however that the moment they became nobodies he should have been out studying the effects of keyblades on hearts and injuries and such instead of growing pretty blue roses everywhere and being crazy.

Skyla herself was becoming highly annoyed. She understood why they were all upset, but it seemed that Damayon was the only one being reasonable in this situation. He was being the quiet sorrowful type, which was a nice change from the rest of the mess going on. Damayon, while good friends with Mirra, wasn't quite as close to her as Krista and Ray had been. It saddened him, but he knew that there was nothing he could do about it at this point. It took less effort to sit and remember the good times than sit thinking about what could have been done differently.

"OKAY EVERYONE STOP!" Skyla exclaimed, causing everyone to stop what they were doing instantly. "Yes, Mirra is gone. Ray wanted to marry her, she was Kisatrix's best friend, and Elexi is upset because he hasn't lost anyone before now. Now, let's build the extension to the castle, because I have a feeling that's what Mirra would want and it's much more productive than sitting in this room screaming, trying to cry, actually sort of crying, and banging our heads on the wall."

No one could argue with Skyla's logic here, Mirra had put a lot of work into editing all the blueprints. For the most part they were done now; it wouldn't take long with Skyla's help to put the extension in.

Elexi sobbed a couple more times and Ray rubbed his head. All four of them got up and followed Skyla to look at the blueprints.

--

Riku and Sora, along with Kairi who was now on Riku's back, finally walked themselves out of the End of the World.

There had been a large amount of heartless in the whole journey out. Riku found that highly interesting, as the Reorganization didn't seem to control them, or even entirely know about them perhaps. It was an untapped resource that Skyla didn't seem to look into, was there something about the End of the World that was inaccessible to the Reorganization?

The more Riku thought about it, the more that made sense. Skyla had a hard time accessing it when they all appeared there; it almost seemed to be a fluke. Did the End of the World mean the end of her spatial power?

"What's on your mind, Riku?" Sora noticed that Riku had been silent for an unusual amount of time. They had just called the Gummi Ship and were waiting; normally Riku would've started talking about something by now.

"I think... that I know how to beat the Reorganization."

--

The whole situation in Midnight's Light had now settled down. Without Elexi and Damayon around it didn't take long for their powers amplified together to die down. It still caused a great deal of damage however, the lucky ones being the ones not taken by the darkness.

Leon's group was a large portion of these lucky ones, and was already back to rebuilding the town. They found it odd that Sora and Riku had magically disappeared in the middle of all of that, and of course they were concerned for what had happened.

"Now wait guys, you're all having doubts as to weather Sora's okay?" Yuffie was listening in on a conversation between Leon, Cid and Merlin. None of them sounded confident in Sora's safety.

"It's not that the kid's not great, Yuffie." Cid started, taking a breath of his smoke. This situation was highly stressful; his opinion was they shouldn't have ever left what was now Hollow Bastion yet again.

"It's that those nobodies were incredibly powerful." Leon had heard the stories from all three of Sora's group. He knew they were fairly intelligent and quick thinkers, but he didn't know they were high powered on top of it.

"I think we're going back to Hollow Bastion after this."

--

"Well, I think it's done."

The gauntlet extension to the castle had finally been completed, minus the gauntlet room that would have been Mirra's. Before Skyla even said that it was safe to walk into everyone had run off to their large, cylinder shaped rooms to decorate.

Skyla sighed, knowing that all of them were incredibly lucky they drew very nice blue prints, otherwise she wouldn't trust her own handiwork.

Instead of going to her own room to get ready, she decided it was time to run a status update in the control room. Upon arriving she found that Kisatrix had gone through all the papers. No doubt Ray had set her off on some weird tangent.

She looked at the digital heartless count, and she rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn't just going blind again.

"Four hundred and seventy thousand heartless?" She couldn't believe it. She almost refused to believe it. She knew that the Reorganization's power didn't range so far as the End of the World, but had there really been that many heartless in there?

It looked to her like she had done all this building just in time, if she called all the heartless back she could lure Sora's group here and then eliminate the problem they posed.

"Skyla, can we talk?"

Skyla jumped up and turned around to find Elexi, had he been smaller and been holding a teddy bear he would have reminded her of a child who had just had a nightmare. He was semi standing behind the wall, it was adorable-ish.

"Of course Elexi." Skyla smiled at him, pointing at one of the rolly chairs in the room and sitting in another.

Elexi just shook his head though; he wanted to talk to his teacher, not just Skyla.

"Can we go to your secret office? Please?"

"Ummm... okay."

--

"We're nearing the end..."

Ray, Damayon and Kisatrix had finished with the excitement of checking out their new rooms and were now all sitting in Skyla's.

The point behind the whole decorating concept wasn't exactly to make it look pretty, but it was also to make the room work to each of their advantages. Ray's was covered in a thin layer of ice; Damayon's was painted a darker colour; Kisatrix had attached highly flammable pouches to the walls to make awesome explosions.

Each room had also been designed to stop them from collapsing over, so that Ray's ice wouldn't melt and Kisatrix's room wouldn't blow up from the flammable pouches.

"What do you mean the end is coming?" Ray asked Kisatrix, clearly slightly concerned for her seemingly depressed state.

"The end. The heartless count is over four hundred thousand. When we were doing that research I saw it."

Ray thought about this for a moment. Maybe it wasn't something he'd notice, as he never spent much time in that particular room.

"That's my doing." Damayon spoke softly, it being the first time he had spoken since news of Mirra's death. "I've been slowly crushing my own powers; I've got very little left."

Kisatrix and Ray just stared blankly at him for a moment. Ray wasn't sure what to say, while Kisatrix was working on acting out a small fit.

"You've been crushing your powers, what are you crazy? When we get home how are you supposed to deal with the world without your powers? Damayon you're crazy, why would you do that?"

"For you, Kris." Damayon smiled a little at her, "Lookit, I've got enough of my powers to live back home. I crushed the part of my darkness that controlled the heartless, killing off the ones in my control with the power of my keyblade and sending them off to Kingdom Hearts. I'll be fine, trust me please?"

Kisatrix sighed, seeing that she had no choice but to just trust him. The moment she knew how to properly lecture him however he'd have an ear full.

--

"Okay Elexi, what's the matter?"

After Skyla had taken Elexi to the private office, he insisted on setting it up as close to Skye's original office format as was possible here. Skyla had just watched as he spent five minutes lining up a small computer on the desk and put vines up around the desk to make the room seem smaller, as Skye's had been. It was an odd sight indeed.

Now that he had finally settled down and made Skyla put on the old lab coat he had stolen for the break in, it looked like he was ready to talk.

"Professor Skye, did I choose the right major? I mean, I don't think I'm entirely qualified to be a botanist nobody, I'm not doing well and I'm afraid of failing and disappointing my parents."

Skyla now knew where this was coming from, Elexi had the same breakdown when he messed up an electromagnetic field experiment and electrocuted his lab partner, sending him to the hospital with some major burns. This breakdown here was Elexi's way of telling her he wasn't taking losing Mirra well at all.

"Eli, I'm not going to lie to you. That was a horrible performance." Skyla paused a moment to let Elexi sob a couple time, like he had before.

"However, you have a ton of potential as a botanist nobody. Everyone makes mistakes dear, and I'm sure you'll learn from this. You'll have your Master's by the end of the year and then you don't have to worry about this, right?"

Elexi sobbed a bit more and nodded, clearly reassured now.

"Now, let's take a look here." Skyla pulled her keyboard off the top of her monitor. It amazed her that Elexi had remembered a little detail like her habit of placing her keyboard on top of her monitor when it wasn't being used. "Eli... it looks like you have a ninety-five in your saving people's lives class, I don't think one little mess up is going to jeopardize your success here."

"Thank you Professor, now I have to go do my completion of Kingdom Hearts exam. I'll see you later." Elexi got up and left the room, although walking in a straight line looking for the door to Skye's office only caused him to run into a wall. Skyla just made him appear back in the main part of the castle, knowing he'd eventually wander his way to where he was supposed to be.

"Crazy Eli." Skyla smiled and folded her arms, thinking about the day that had happened before.

It was odd to her how Elexi's memories of his past life didn't seem to affect his personality as a nobody. Instead of acting like who he was, he acted based on the memories of what he wanted to be like. Very rarely did he act based on his normal life, let alone act out any portion of a day like that.

Her rationalization of it was that he knew that one of his largest failures had before been resolved in a meeting like that and he figured it would help again. It would be interesting to see what he would be like when he got his heart back...

"No, can't use students as lab rats..." Skyla mumbled to herself as she hung up the lab coat and left to meet up with everyone.

--

Riku and Sora had finally gotten into the Gummi Ship, which had taken forever to pick them up at the End of the World. Riku safely put Kairi in one of the back seats and sat next to Sora, looking at the radar.

"That wasn't there before." Sora commented and pointed to a specific point on the radar. Based on its size Riku knew exactly what it was.

However, what Riku didn't know was whether he should tell Sora was it was or not. Sora would be all gung-ho to get there as fast as possible, but he knew Kairi wasn't currently in any shape to fight the nobodies at this moment. Apparently her injuries were a little worse than they looked. A little white lie wouldn't hurt here.

"I'm not sure what it is, Sora." Riku sighed, pretending to be disappointed in himself for not knowing. "Kairi's pretty beat up though, we should stop by Midnight's Light. Aerith can probably help her, and we should assess the damage there."

Sora nodded in agreement, and set auto-pilot to head off to Midnight's Light.

--

Upon arriving in Midnight's Light, Aerith immediately took Kairi to take care off all the cuts. Leon and everyone else were just glad to see they were all alive, having all that worry.

"You can go ahead to the World That Never Was." Leon pointed up at the night sky. Riku and Sora were surprised to see that on a night as clear as this, it the castle was actually visible on the horizon. Kingdom Hearts was just a speck of nothing from this distance, Sora had a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that the tiny speck was what they were fighting to protect.

Even at this distance however, Riku could already spot an issue with the castle's appearance.

"They built an extension..." He commented softly, squinting into the distance to see what was going on. He couldn't tell from here, but he could tell that something was up. Last he even checked they weren't very far in getting back Kingdom Hearts, and yet even the speck in the sky that was Kingdom Hearts looked awfully alive.

Sora looked at Riku, and then the castle. He himself hadn't spent nearly enough time in the World That Never Was to notice something like that from this distance, but now that it was pointed out he could definitely see a rather long, weird looking extension to the side.

Leon hadn't been to the World That Never Was at all, but he could see what they were talking about.

"Guys, be careful when you go there. And no gambling." He teased them both. "We're going back to Hollow Bastion when this is all over."

"Awesome!" Sora was happy to hear that they finally all got to go home. No offense to the people of this world, but it definitely looked like a place you needed to be born into in order to fully appreciate.

Sora and Riku decided then they'd help with a bit of damage control here, Riku insisted on it because he felt bad for agreeing to "the experiment". After changing out of the comfortable, custom made outfit Skyla had spent hours on into his normal clothes, he and Sora spent a couple hours cleaning up the mess and the platform and such.

After a couple hours, they were excited to see Kairi up and about again. She looked much better than before, and that was a relief to everyone.

"So Riku," Sora questioned as they sat in Leon's house again, drinking the highly caffeinated drinks, "how are we supposed to take down the Reorganization?"

Riku had been thinking about this for awhile. He had finally figured out how to beat Skyla, but that was something he needed to do himself at this point. It was too complicated to take Sora along. He didn't want to hog the spotlight, but the true point here was to eliminate the Reorganization.

Other than that, he didn't know what the plan was right now. Somehow, all of them had kept their plans relatively secret to him. Sure, he knew that something was going on with building something, but he had no idea what it was.

There was then the problem of having to face all the members, including Damayon's group, individually. All of them had different strengths and weaknesses, and that was an issue.

Damayon himself had a keyblade, and even without other elemental powers all keyblade wielders were quite skilled and difficult to combat, as they found out with Roxas.

He wasn't so concerned about Mirra; she had looked pretty beaten up when they all left. She probably wasn't up for a fight at the moment. Ray however had ice abilities, and that was something Sora was going to have to deal with, seeing as Sora was the one to deal with the ice wielding Vexen during his time in the Organization XIII's castle Oblivion. Same with Kisatrix's fire abilities, although that was a bit of a double whammy. Kisatrix was also as skilled with a sword as any keyblade wielder.

Elexi was a different matter all together, as his flowers and vines were designed for long range combat. That was for sure a fight that needed to be done with at least two members of their group fighting. Skyla was a matter of getting her powers temporarily disabled, as she was fairly useless without them.

He did need to take into account however that Skyla and Elexi were close; he was practically her little brother. Or something, to him Elexi had acted kind of jealous when he was around Skyla. He didn't think Elexi and Skyla were on the same page with how they felt about each other.

It was all a mess; he'd have to figure this all out as they went.

"Just leave Skyla to me, and watch for everyone's individual powers."

--

"Alright, team!" Skyla clapped in enthusiasm as she entered her room with Elexi, who had calmed down a great deal. "By the way, love your room Ray, very awesome."

Ray just nodded to Skyla in acknowledgement, but was a little nervous about all this. There were three Keyblade wielders, the odds didn't look good.

"We're nearing the end of this. One of three things will happen: The thirty thousand heartless approach will kill them, we'll kill them, or they'll kill us." She didn't lose her chipper tone at all. "Everyone up for the challenge?"

Everyone just nodded in semi-agreement. Sure, this was exciting, but it was also scary. There may have been more of them, and while this gauntlet concept was designed to wear the keyblade wielders down, it wasn't looking good for the people who were closer to the start of it.

"Okay team, they're coming. I'm going to start at the bottom, and let everyone know when it's their turn to go ahead." She threw a walkie-talkie to Ray.

"Let's show those stupid Organization XIII idiots that five is better than thirteen."


	22. Chapter 22

**((Author's Note: Those of you who saw chapter 21 right after it got put up should know that I changed a lot of it due to some errors. Make sure you read the current copy of it before continuing.))**

"We're finally here."

Sora and Kairi were amazed to see how little this world had managed to change. Unlike the previous worlds they travelled to during this journey, it looked like time had managed to stand still here. It was amazing.

Riku on the other hand realized how sick of this place he truly was. It was nice to go a bit behind the scenes and spy, but seeing as they managed to keep what was going on now a secret from him he was more worried than happy to be here.

Walking out into the first open area of the world, they were all surprised to find Skyla standing out in the middle of the area. Riku had to stop Sora and Kairi from running ahead to attack her; clearly she wasn't here to fight them quite yet.

"Riku, you look well dear. As do you Kairi, I'm glad to see you're fighting fit, as Ray and Kisatrix may have something to say about your survival in this world." She smiled wickedly, if any one of them was going to go down in this world she had no doubt it would be Kairi.

"Why are you down here, Skyla? What's with the extension?" Riku nodded up towards the castle, it looked a lot more ominous from down here.

"Oh, that? You know, I'm not sure, how about you fight through a couple heartless here and find out?"

Before Riku could respond Skyla was gone and replaced with what looked like a thousand heartless. They were coming from everywhere, the walls and the ground. Surprisingly, a lot of them were tougher heartless they had faced in Midnight's Light. Skyla was finally trying to kill them.

"Thirty thousand. You up for the challenge?" Skyla had appeared behind the three of them, clearly amused at the shocked look at all of their faces.

"Wait, thirty thousand? You need more than that."

"Wrong, the counter jumped. Thirty thousand more, and we'll have enough to open Kingdom Hearts. Do us a favour and die though, that would really be helpful." She gave another smile and a wave and was gone again in an instant.

The three of them turned back to the heartless mess going on in this one small area.

"Riku, is it really necessary to kill them all?"

"You know... I don't think we have to. We should just be able to fight through, only killing the ones directly in our way." Riku knew what Sora was thinking, and it was a good idea.

The three of them took out their keyblades and went in to take out some of the heartless before moving on to the next mess of an area.

--

"Skyla, is this really going to work?"

Elexi had left Skyla's gauntlet room. Seeing as he was second last, he had some time to kill, and some concerns. He and Skyla sat on the roof, watching the chaos ensue below.

"I'm not going to lie to you ever Elexi." Skyla sighed, clearly not entirely happy. "The odds aren't in our favour. While it may seem like it, let's face it; if one of them can fight their way out of pure darkness imagine what three of them can do."

Elexi was surprised that Skyla doubted her own plans so much; it wasn't like her to doubt anything she created. Even that experiment she tried to run which was clearly done backwards, it wasn't in her nature to admit to any margin of error.

"Then of course, Riku's figured out exactly how to defeat me." Skyla smiled in an odd manner. Elexi found Skyla's behaviour to be highly abnormal; maybe she was going hysterical on him. She had never acted like this as long as he had known her.

"How do you know that?"

"He stopped Sora and Kairi from attacking me. He's got a plan, he just can't pull it off with his friends around." She was smiling again and rocking back and forth slightly, even Elexi could see he was being the sane one at this particular moment.

"So what's his plan?"

Skyla stopped rocking back and forth and screwed up her face in thought.

"Hmmm... You know, I'm not entirely sure." Skyla stared at the sky, humming and hawing over what that plan could be. There obviously was one, but there were several possibilities of what that could be.

"Well... obviously it involves somehow disabling my powers. It could be a bet, although I'm fairly certain he's learned not to gamble with me... perhaps he tries to seduce me again, although he did find out that such a plan was an instant failure and he'd end up dizzy. However, it would explain him not wanting Sora and Kairi around for it. He knows that wouldn't work. Hummm..."

Suddenly her expression changed, realizing what his plan really was. He couldn't... he wouldn't... she wouldn't be able to do a damn thing there!

"Oh dear god!" She exclaimed suddenly, causing Elexi, who hadn't yet realized her mood change, to jump in surprise. He started to wonder if female nobodies were affected by their monthly insanities.

--

It didn't take long for Sora and his friends to make their way to the area below the large building. Neither Sora nor Riku could remember its name, but they knew a lot of weird memories came from this area.

Also in this area was several thousand more heartless, who instantly swarmed the keyblade wielders. There was no way they were going to make it to the castle without taking out quite a number of them.

The fortunate part was that they had already taken out the heartless Skyla had created with the files Elexi had stolen. Clearly she didn't have a lot of time to create them, otherwise there would have been more of them.

It was a long period time later before any of them noticed a decrease in the number of heartless respawning. It was a great relief to all of them, until the realization kicked in and the heartless started disappearing on their own accord, no doubt called back.

Riku was the first to take a look up at Kingdom Hearts, to find it was nearly complete now. It just needed to be open.

Also on top of the building was Elexi waving at all of them, clearly teasing them.

"Hey Riku, not so hot on my professor now are you? Nyeh! Come catch us if you can!"

The only thing Riku could think about was how loud Elexi was. With the distance between where they were and the top of the castle it wasn't logical for Elexi to sound like he was standing next to them.

"Elexi, stop that and get back in here!" Skyla yelled at him from the door back inside. It clicked in then that Skyla was the one amplifying space in order to make their voices travel a longer distance.

"They'll open Kingdom Hearts with Damayon if we don't distract them." Riku commented lightly before running off to the entrance of the castle, forcing Sora and Kairi to follow.

--

"They taped over your mouth, scribbled out the truth with their lies, you little spies..."

"Why won't she stop singing?!"

"She does this when she's nervous, leave her be."

All five members of the extended Reorganization were sitting in Skyla's room again, listening to Skyla sing. It wasn't bad, she went a little high sometimes though and it started to hurt people's ears, especially Damayon's.

Elexi knew that singing loudly with her headphones on was a nervous habit Skye had when performing more dangerous experiments. He truly didn't think it helped her focus much, but she pretty much had a mental relapse if you took the headphones away. It didn't help that she often chose one song and stuck it on repeat.

Skyla paused a moment in her singing, noticing that Sora's group had ran through the castle and were now in Ray's room waiting for something to happen. She couldn't believe she hadn't picked up on that sooner, but the song was so good.

"RAY!" She yelled into the walkie-talkie even though Ray was standing right next to her. He himself was having some doubts about whether Skyla was going to be okay to fight any of the keyblade wielders here today.

Ray pulled out a sword made of ice and his eyes flashed red, causing Kisatrix to jump slightly.

"Damn Ray, don't do that when I'm around..."

"Sorry." He walked out of Skyla's room down towards his own room without another word, leaving the room full of Skyla's annoying singing behind.

--

"What an odd room..."

Sora was tapping the thin layer of frozen water that was all over the walls. He and Riku didn't seem to mind this room, although Kairi was having a hard time maintaining a vertical base on the slippery floor.

"I'm glad you like it." Ray walked in about as silently as Skyla appeared, causing Kairi to finally fall over. Ray simply laughed amusedly at Kairi.

"I hope you didn't bring her in here expecting her to make it out alive."

Sora and Riku both stepped in front of Kairi in defensive mode, almost running into each other. Sora already had two keyblades out, although Riku seemed to forget that keyblades existed.

Ray summoned once again his blade made from ice. All three of them suddenly wished they were fighting on a beach, where the sword would melt pretty quickly. There was nothing that could be done about it now.

Sora was the first to move, not willing to let Ray have an attempt to get in a strike. His plans were just slightly sidetracked though when Ray caught him off guard and knocked one of the keyblades out of his hand, blocking the second. It didn't seem to shock Ray that Sora just summoned the keyblade back to his hand, as he was fairly confident in side stepping it.

Sora looked back to see why Riku and Kairi weren't pitching in here, and realized it was because Ray had put up a rather thick wall of ice between the fight and Riku and Kairi. This wasn't good, clearly this room was designed to also be a weapon as well as keep Ray's sword cold.

His weaponry theory was confirmed when spikes of pure ice started shooting up from the ground. And down from the ceiling. Having already figured out that it was what the room was designed for Sora had little difficulty sidestepping them over and over.

Once the spikes stopped appearing, Sora noticed that Ray was no longer around. Looking through the ice he saw his two best friends having an awful difficult time fighting Ray on the slippery ground. The ice obstructed his view of what was going on, but it was clear that it wasn't going well at all.

Riku and Kairi truly weren't having fun. Kairi couldn't function at all on the icy ground, and Riku was having a hard time dealing with Ray's sword because he only had one keyblade at the moment. Ray was also sending up spikes of ice at Kairi, which just barely missed every time and was more of a warning signal than a real attack. Riku wasn't sure if he was supposed to be trying to watch Kairi or if he was supposed to try to kill Ray at this point.

He realized he had made the wrong choice in choosing to keep fighting Ray when Kairi started screaming in pain. It would seem Ray was waiting until Riku decided not to watch Kairi as closely to actually bother making an attack attempt worth anything.

"Kairi!" Riku wanted to go help her right this instant, but found himself defending a more violent than usual blow from Ray. This guy knew what he was doing.

Meanwhile, Kairi had a giant gash on her leg and profusely bleeding everywhere. Ray stopped sending up spikes at her, but he didn't stop attacking Riku. With every second Kairi was bleeding he got more distracted, from not only her but Sora having a fit on the other side of the glass.

Ray truly hated Kairi, but seeing as she was a girl and had been bleeding for a fair amount of time now he decided maybe it was time to head back to the other side of the ice wall.

--

Within seconds Sora found himself engaged in combat with Ray once again. The aggression Ray had started with Riku didn't waver a moment when he switched to fighting Sora.

Sora, having two keyblades, did manage to stifle the momentum Ray came back to this battle with. After getting in a couple decent blows Ray was finally back on the defensive, clearly losing powers now. It didn't take long to notice the top of the ice wall was beginning to melt.

Ray was angry at himself now. He had played ice spikes with Kairi too long, and now he didn't have near enough power to finish off this battle with Sora. Plus he had started to bleed oddly. This wasn't going to end well. It didn't even look like he had managed to stifle Sora's energy level much at this point, but he did suppose he had already done what he was really in this battle to accomplish. There was no point going on without Mirra anymore.

Sora stepped back in surprise when Ray let his ice sword disappear. Sure it was starting to melt slightly, but he still had enough power to keep going, or so Sora thought.

"What the hell are you doing Ray?"

"I'm done here. I've struck my revenge and saved Kisatrix the trouble of trying to avenge her. She wouldn't be effective at such a concept at the moment anyway." Ray stepped out of the battle stance and towards the door that led to the next part of the gauntlet design.

"You won't have anymore trouble from me. I'm going to have Skyla send me home, and take care of a couple things left lose in what's left of it."

--

Sora stood dumbstruck for several minutes after Ray left, partly because he had to wait for more of the ice wall to melt before going on to check on Riku and Kairi.

To tell the truth he had no idea what was going on here. He wasn't used to the bad guy giving up that easily. But then, Ray didn't begin as a bad guy and he wasn't taken by the darkness so he supposed it would all end alright.

He ended up snapping out of whatever trance he was in and went to go see how Riku and Kairi were doing.

His heart stopped however, seeing Riku crying and the large puddle of blood coming from a large gash in Kairi's leg. Riku had it all over him, so much so that it looked like he was nearly crying Kairi's blood.

"Riku? Is she okay?"

"Does she look okay to you? You're so stupid Sora, she's gone."


	23. Chapter 23

"What do we do now?"

Sora and Riku were sitting there, sobbing over Kairi's body. Neither of them knew what to do right now, they both simply wanted to sit there forever. Life was pretty much over anyway.

Kairi was pretty close to the most important thing in either of their lives. She had been their friend since she moved to the islands when they were all very little. Both Riku and Sora had hoped that she would someday remember things about where she came from, the mystery that it was interested both of them.

Kairi was also the centre of the reason they had journeyed the first time. Sure, she was a magnet for trouble when it came to affairs with the darkness, but they never thought having her involved in all this would eventually cause them this much trouble. She didn't deserve it. They didn't deserve this. What on earth would make Ray so angry with her anyway?

All Sora truly wanted to do now was sit there and cry for the rest of his life. Sitting here might cost him his life though, as it was within enemy territory. It wouldn't matter anyway. The shorter his life was the easier it would be.

Riku's opinion was slightly different. Kairi was like his little sister, but then again Sora was very much similar to having a little sister too. But Kairi... she was something special. Her smile always filled any situation with warmth and a sense of being at home.

No matter the trouble, Kairi had always been there for both of them. This moment was the worst moment in either of their lives, and during their journeys they had had a lot of bad moments. What were they supposed to do now?

"I'll tell you what you can do." Skyla had appeared behind them both, her headphones blasting and causing her to speak loudly, making them both jump. "YOU CAN GO AHEAD PAST DAMAYON'S GAUNTLET ROOM AND FACE KISATRIX! Why you ask? Because Kairi's death has caused both Damayon and Ray to go home. Yea. I'm not happy. Do you have any idea how much this one girl has cut the Reorganization's odds of success? It's down by like 50. FIFTY PERCENT!"

The gestures Skyla made while having a slight breakdown were insane. First she was waving her arms in the air, and then she was spinning and hopping on one foot. Riku was fairly certain she had been drinking something, but that didn't matter so long as he didn't care. Sora came to the same conclusion, and was the first one to retaliate against Skyla's insanity.

"Well guess what, we're not ready yet! Kairi was everything to us... a best friend... a mediator... and she was just amazing. Hey, are you listening?"

Skyla by this time had started singing to her song again, very off key. Sora was fairly certain she couldn't hear him in the first place. Riku was fairly certain he could use this to his advantage.

"Skylexia, how about a battle?"

"At the End of the World, right?" Skyla stopped her jumping around and smiled at Riku's surprise in the fact that she had already figured out his little plan. "You realized that the End of the World also indicates the outside border of space, and that I'm completely useless there. You don't want to take Sora as it's a bit of a complication to explain a couple of the more complex details to him, isn't that right?"

"You're real sharp Skyla, that was my exact plan." Riku was very surprised she picked up on it, there was no point in lying and trying to cover the fact. Her ability to notice slight oddities in behavioural patterns was amazing.

"Now, I don't have any idea how you were going to trick me into going to the End of the World, but I am aware it would involve maxing out my power in order to create a second fluke. I have another idea, if you don't mind me making this a little more fair for me."

"Go ahead."

"We'll take the portal to the border and cross over, and I get three swords. And I get to sing."

She had clearly been thinking about this for awhile. Riku knew the reasons behind both the reasonable ones; so she'd start the powerless battle with max strength and incase the swords flew out of her hands. It seemed more than fair to him, because Skyla was a horrible swordsman. The reason she wanted to sing was unknown to him...

"Sora, what do you think?"

"I THINK I'M GOING TO KILL HER AND HUNT DOWN RAY!"

"It's not Ray's fault you know."

"Wait a second, how did Kairi cut the Reorganization's odds by 50?"

"Mirra died after the fight with Kairi. Not Elexi's fault incase anyone's wondering."

The three of them had started aimlessly babbling amongst each other, seemingly about things of very little importance. At one point coconuts and airplanes were being discussed, and it got to the point where none of them were entirely sure what they were talking about anymore. Still, they babbled on until Riku snapped out of the babbling trance.

"Okay, okay, stop all of us. Sora, can you please handle Kisatrix and Elexi?"

"Fine..." Sora grumbled. It was rational to say that finishing this was what Kairi wanted.

"Oh kids, if only you knew what I knew." Skyla smiled and gestured for Riku to follow her into the void portal. Somehow three swords had magically appeared with her, which Riku found odd, but he followed anyway.

Sora sighed, and decided not to look back at this point. After this they were going to go find Ray and have a little talk with him.

--

Sora ran right past Damayon's very dark, bland room and into Kisatrix's slightly more interesting but still more or less bland room, only to find her and Elexi stand there waiting for him.

"Uhh... Elexi?" Sora was pretty sure he was supposed to be in the next room, waiting until after Kisatrix was defeated or done with him or whatever. Based on the look on Elexi's face, he had different plans now.

"Change of pace, Sora. Riku's gone, can you beat us yourself?" Elexi smiled with an evil Sora had yet to know him for yet. "I do have one message to convey before we start, and that's that you really shouldn't bother going after Ray if you make it out of here alive. Damayon's fairly certain that you'd find it quite pointless, if you're not retarded and have some idea of what I'm saying. Are you retarded Sora?"

Sora still wasn't quite sure what was going on. Everyone seemed to have a personality shift upon their arrival here, it was kind of out there.

"On another note, Skyla's fairly sure we're not going to finish this properly. This is why we're moving this up to Kingdom Hearts, because it's fun and creepy and dark and my voice echoes in there. You want to fight an echoing voice? I think not."

"Elexi, I almost feel like it will turn on me to ask, but what is with you and Skyla today?"

"They get like this sometimes. One time they watched a very suspenseful movie and this happened. It's an annoying habit they share where their memories get messed up by being blinded by obvious information and don't like the end result said information gives them." Kisatrix had seen this twice before, neither time was very good for any of them. Clearly Elexi had picked up the habit of babbling aimlessly when nervous from Skyla. At least he didn't pick up her singing ability.

--

Riku wasn't comfortable with this situation. There was something about Skyla here, she seemed to be far more animate when she stepped into the End of the World. He hadn't noticed it before because she was tired as hell, but now it was obvious that while she was powerless there was something else going on here.

"Skyla, I'm a little curious... and I forgot to ask before... but why do you guys only have three members?"

Skyla was smiling and singing still, the same song over and over. Miraculously she heard him, and her mood changed. Here is was a lot different than when her moods changed normally.

"We had four. Another student of mine, Dashi, got caught in the spatial rift when we messed up the experiment. It was kind of nice, he was a narcissist studying the effects of time on the world, so killing him off when he became a nobody was fun. Elexi couldn't stand him, and if he didn't score near perfect on all my tests I would have failed him..." Riku more or less tuned Skyla out after this point. He asked the question to watch her reaction, but the way she was reacting had so much more meaning than it would responding based on simply her memories.

Skyla picked up on Riku's curiosity, seeing as he hadn't bothered to attack her yet. She then realized that Riku wasn't Elexi, as "duh" as a statement as that was. He clearly didn't pick up on all this.

"Okay, I want you to state the basic premise of nobodies, and then I will state another scientific statement and we'll see if you're as sharp as you usually are."

Riku thought for several moments, unsure of what she was aiming for him to say here. There were a couple things behind the nobodies.

"Hmm... nobodies are the shells left behind when a strong heart gets drawn into the darkness, they are thought to not really be existent; they are nothing."

"Bingo!" Skyla smiled, getting the exact answer she was looking for. "Now, things that exist can only exist within the limits of space and time."

Riku stood there dumbstruck for a couple moments. What was the point in stating that?

It clicked in a couple moments later.

"You exist here?"

"You picked up on that far quicker than I would've guessed. Yes, outside the boundaries of space I do exist. While in all technicality, you do not. If you stayed in this particular place for an extended period of time, you would notice that you would start losing your ability to react. Neither you nor Sora were here long enough for it to take effect, for so long as you remember how to react it's just like you feel."

"So... I'm a nobody here?"

"Nothingness has to exist somewhere, like anti-matter. I'm sure you've studied theories of alternate universes in school? It's almost true, I guess."

While he understood, Riku had no idea what Skyla was talking about... why wouldn't nobodies just move past the end of the world if they really wanted to be whole again? It wasn't long before Skyla picked up on the question burning at Riku's brain.

"We'd move here, except it's pointless. Do you see anything? Besides, unlike the normal world, nothing starts to collapse upon itself after awhile. Trying to live here would end in death very quickly, it's bad enough to try and stage a fight here." Her eyes were drifting upwards, trying to decide if this was the safest idea at the moment.

It probably wasn't, she was pretty much screwed so long as they decided to have the fight here. It was nice though, to just feel a little, even if it wasn't for long. Riku wouldn't understand, while he couldn't feel emotion here his memories were so fresh it wouldn't be noticeable to him. But just to feel that fact that she didn't truly care running through her veins, she wanted to stay here forever. It wasn't physically possible, as this place was likely to collapse and the fact that it wasn't actually space didn't help here. It was just... nice to know that there was somewhere where nothing was something, completely disproving every research paper she had ever submitted for the king of her stupid world's review and criticism. Where nothing was everything...

It worked to her advantage. She was going to lose this war, but in the end she would win the battle.

--

"Ummm... Kisatrix, did Sky leave instructions on_ how_ exactly to open Kingdom Hearts?"

Sora, Elexi and Kisatrix were all on the roof now, standing before the door that appeared that was supposed to open into Kingdom Hearts. Both Sora and Kisatrix knew that they needed the keyblade to open the door at this point, but Elexi's frantic struggle to try and pull the door open and then trying to choke it with his vines was amusing them both greatly.

"_Guuuuyssssss!_ Help me open the door!"

"Fine..." Kisatrix sighed. "Sora, can you please open the door so we can finish this? Preferably as quickly as possible."

Sora was a little nervous about this idea. Riku was off somewhere, probably doing very little in terms of actually making progress, and he was stuck here. If he opened Kingdom Hearts, he wasn't sure of what would happen. Kingdom Hearts was light, but what had the nobodies been working on here?

It was also pointless to fight so far off the ground, should he choose not to bother opening Kingdom Hearts and fighting within it. Elexi seemed to have a habit of picking people up with his vines and throwing them, a fall from here wouldn't be good for him in the least.

Sora sighed, summoning his keyblade and reluctantly opening the door that would lead the three of them into the end of this fight. There was only room for success in this situation.

"Yay! Let's go Kisatrix!"


	24. Chapter 24

**((Wow, I'm real sorry this took so long to complete. I started a new job and there was exams and everything and it was a mess. So this is the last chapter, and then the next chapter will be the secret ending (which I'm also struggling with) and then I'll move onto my spin-off fic hopefully. Yay!))**

"So how would you like to meet your end today, sir?"

Kisatrix was in a bit more of a teasing mood now that Sora, Elexi, and herself were inside of Kingdom Hearts. While Elexi was in the middle of awing and ohhhhing Kingdom Hearts, Kisatrix was weighing her sword's power and getting ready to finish this.

"May I recommend the chicken; it's absolutely deliciously sliced and diced." Kisatrix took her beginning stance, being very careful to line Sora up with her attack plan very carefully. With any luck, Elexi would wake up from his childish happiness by the time she was finished here.

Sora had a different plan in mind however, calling upon the power of the Final form, ready to give this his all. With the keyblades detached from his hands and using energy to control them would give Kisatrix a challenge, readily apparent as she recalculated her plan upon seeing Sora change his form.

Elexi finally came down from his "Oooh, lookit the shiny thing!" mindset and decided to help Kisatrix here. Unlike Kisatrix, who was usually too lazy to care, Elexi had gone through all of Skyla's papers on everyone they were against. This form wasn't unfamiliar to him, nor was it to Skyla, if she had been here right now at least.

"Elexi, I'm not so great with Physics… what are the odds of those things hitting me not being at least 2.5 times the strength as they would be of he were holding them?"

"Pretty low, dearie sweet Kisakins. Pretty darn low. The good news is, we can probably save hundreds of dollars on Kingdom Hearts Insurance by switching to Keyblades."

"Yea, and if we could use Keyblades we wouldn't be having this problem right now."

"That…" Elexi paused for a moment, watching a sparkle soar across the sky, "…is potentially true. Did you see that sparkly? I'm gonna go eat it. Om nom nom."

Sora was a little weirded out by how easily distracted these two were. He wasn't entirely sure why he wasn't using this opportunity to blindside both of them. There was something about their insanity that distracted him too. He supposed there wasn't much more time to waste, as on the off-chance that Skyla defeated Riku he didn't want to be facing all three of them by himself.

Within what seemed to be an instant his keyblades were being blocked by both Kisatrix's sword and Elexi's vines. He managed to pull one back from Kisatrix's block, but in the moment that he had taken to analyze everything Elexi had wrapped his vines around the other one.

In another split instant he cut the second keyblade from the grasp of Elexi's vines. It was too dangerous to only focus on one of them he quickly found out as he sloppily blocked the blindside attack Kisatrix threw at him.

The odds changed quickly though, as Kisatrix wasn't expecting him to be able to block at all from that angle and stumbled forward slightly, causing her leg to smash right into Sora's second keyblade. She screamed in agony and fell back a bit, giving Sora an opportunity to switch the focus here.

Elexi however was ready for Sora to come at him the moment Kisatrix's attack got blocked, and used his vine whip to pull so hard on the keyblade that Sora's energy bond to it was instantly torn and the keyblade was thrown off into the distance.

Sora didn't even have enough time to bother trying to summon it back before he had to block Elexi's second attempt to completely disarm him with the whip. Elexi neatly sidestepped Sora's offensive attempt without so much as showing effort to the movement. This was exciting.

Elexi did however become sidetracked when he noticed that Kisatrix hadn't yet recovered from the blow to her leg. Now that he had a chance to look during Sora's recovery, it was bleeding pretty darn badly.

He then realized that he had been distracted observing Kisatrix's injury too long, and that it wasn't him Sora was going to attack next.

"KISATRIX NOOOO!!"

Elexi dove forwards, trying to make his vines reach Sora before Sora reached Kisatrix.

But it was too late.

Not even Kisatrix had noticed Sora's attack, and didn't look up from her injury until Elexi had screamed for her. Looking up didn't help.

It was all slow motion to Elexi. Kisatrix had attempted to pick up her sword to block the keyblade's impact with her chest, but she had fumbled slightly when the uninjured leg clicked the wrong way.

It was only after the damage had been done that Elexi managed to wrap a vine around Sora's ankle and fling him backwards. Elexi continued onto Kisatrix and tried to shake her awake.

"No no no nooooo! Kisatrix! Kris! KISATRIX!" A sense that told him he should be panicking right now kicked in. Ray had warned him before he left with Damayon that no harm was to come to his little sister, and no doubt Damayon felt the same way. Why was it so hard to pay attention?

"Okay Mr. Keyblade, I guess playtime is over. Darnit, sparklies were fun…"

--

Meanwhile, things weren't looking all much better for the Reorganization outside the bounds of what existed.

Skyla and Riku were waged in a full out sword fight, and much to Riku's dismay Skyla had improved greatly since the last time. Skyla was losing badly, but appeared to be trying to bide her time for something. She was also singing quite loudly and off key again, which successfully managed to distract Riku and more or less even out the field.

Riku found out what that something she appeared to be waiting for was when their fight got separated with a door appearing between them. Both of them instantly realized what it was, and Riku was only surprised for a moment. Skyla was surprised slightly longer, not expecting it to appear so soon. Riku knew there was another reason Skyla wanted to fight here.

Skyla didn't seem happy however.

"Darn it, I thought we'd be done here by now…"

Riku couldn't see that happening, as Skyla was a horrible sword fighter. That didn't matter, as the problem here was that a door to Kingdom Hearts had just opened in the middle of their fight in a world that was outside the bounds of space. Someone would have had to open Kingdom Hearts elsewhere for this door to appear here now.

"Skyla, how many doors to Kingdom Hearts are there?"

"Three. That we know of at least…"

Riku knew that there was one here and one in the World That Never Was, but he had never heard about a third. He didn't even see the fact that there was more than one door in the papers. Then again, Skyla did have the whole other office. Obviously anything that was vitally secret was kept there.

"Well, I suppose we better go through here now. Elexi wasn't supposed to allow this to open unless there was real trouble or Sora caught them off guard. I'm sure Sora would appreciate the help, even if he is winning somehow." Skyla shrugged and walked ahead through the door brightly blinding him.

Riku wondered why Sora was fighting within Kingdom Hearts. Skyla had spent so much time on the gauntlet he thought they would have at least been able to finish going through it. Everything was changing now that their odds had been cut down he supposed.

--

Stepping through the door to Kingdom Hearts, both Skyla and Riku were stunned.

Kisatrix was lying motionless on the ground, and Elexi seemed to be in the middle of a blind range against Sora. Riku noticed that Sora was using Final form, but that wasn't exactly being effective against Elexi's vines and his whip. Both of them were kind of starting to miss attacks that normally would have worked and stepping wrong and tripping slightly.

Skyla was gone before Riku could blink, and he himself ran down to the fight when he realized Skyla had switched to a more advantageous area to shoot at Sora with her machine gun.

Unlike the mass chaos in Midnight's Light, Skyla's bullets didn't taper off this time. In fact, they hit the ground with flawless accuracy. The one disadvantage to Skyla was that her laser aim gave away where she was shooting and her bullets were so fast that she couldn't manipulate the space around them.

Elexi found himself having to sidestep Skyla's bullets at times as well, and Skyla loudly apologized for it. Elexi had to admit that the distraction it was creating for Riku and Sora was more than advantageous, as he found getting in hits here and there was a lot easier. He supposed he could forgive Skyla for being a little careless with her aim.

He did wish however that Riku and Sora would have completely forgotten all their magicks and stopped Curing each other constantly. Skyla's aim was becoming more dead on, hitting Riku and Sora now and causing massive damage. Sora had enough of this now.

Skyla wasn't expecting Sora to come at her, and neither was Elexi. It distracted them both when Sora broke off from the fight with Elexi and went for Skyla. Elexi became so distracted that Riku managed to send him flying right into Skyla while no one appeared to be paying any attention at all.

Skyla was now distracted with Sora coming at her and having to shoot towards Riku at the same time, and was a little more and blindsided when Elexi hit her at full speed, knocking both of them to the ground.

"That's not exciting…" Skyla mumbled to herself unhappily.

"Sorry Skyla!" Elexi yelled quickly as he tried to get up, but Sora and Riku had both of them pinned to the wall with the keyblades rather quickly and to both of their dismays.

"I'm realllly sorry Skyla…" Elexi sighed, not having enough energy anymore now that he had lost all momentum. Skyla looked pretty much dead already, she wasn't built for strength and Elexi wasn't exactly the lightest person in the world.

"Yea… this is a little anti-climatic for me. Next time, let's not do that, mmkay? It will be more exciting." Skyla rolled her eyes at Elexi. She was truly angry with herself though, that shouldn't have happened in any case. She should have been paying more attention to what was flying through open space at her. She felt real stupid right now.

"THERE WILL BE NO NEXT TIME!" Sora was really, really angry right now. The fact he had to go on these journeys to defeat people like Skyla was really starting to piss him off now. Riku had to agree, although he hadn't exactly been doing the same thing that Sora had been every time that this happened

"I beg to differ, sweetie." Skyla smiled. "There's always a next time. Both of you ignored me earlier after Kairi's death. I really wish both of you knew what I did, and how I do wish that Riku had the opportunity to go rummaging through my secret office. You'd know then."

Sora and Riku had heard enough, and turned away as both Elexi and Skyla disappeared into nothing. Or more, returned to the state of what they truly were.

They noticed that by this time that Kisatrix's body was also gone, which was good to know.

"Hey Sora, I've got all sorts of new information on the whole End of the World concept and nobodies!" Riku was excited now that everything was over. He ranted on about everything Skyla had told him about the End of the World being the end of space and how nobodies actually existed while within it.

They locked the door to Kingdom Hearts as they left through the entrance that existed in the World That Never Was. It wasn't long before they had made their way down to the Gummi Ship that they had to return to the Disney Castle before they went home. It was real nice that this was all over.

--

On the Destiny Islands, everything seemed to be returned to the normality before the darkness. With the exception however of the burnt half of the island.

Sora and Riku spent weeks on restoring this to the way it was before this last adventure started. They didn't want to remember why the burns existed. Sure, the memory would always be there, but they could help prevent the trigger to start that memory from playing through their heads.

They couldn't however replace the memory of having Kairi around. The island seemed so empty, even when filled with kids screaming and playing and having fun.

It took a long time to recover. Life was slowly but surely returning to some concept of normality. Both Sora and Riku moved onto finish high school.

It was the next summer completely before Sora and Riku found time to hang out again on a basis that wasn't for homework and was longer than half an hour. They had filled their lives so full for some reason; it probably wasn't good for them.

Riku kind of wanted to talk about things that went on in the last little adventure. He had plenty of time to think about it over the last year, and there was one major concern that came to mind every time he thought about Skyla and what was going on with the Reorganization.

Sora didn't appear to have the same concerns, but that was no reason for Riku not to bring them up.

"Hey Sora, what do you think Skylexia meant when she said she wished we knew what she knew?"


	25. Chapter 25

**Kingdom Hearts 4 -- Secret Ending  
****"Conceptual Drawing: The Leader of Repetitive History"**

One thing has been discovered about the hearts and minds of those influenced by darkness that relates back to the theory of Chaos.

While things seem to make sense, there is no actual reason for them to actually work.

The concept of history repeating itself can be put into this Chaos. Who said history was going to repeat itself in chronological order anyway?

--

Location: Radiant Gardens

Things looked fairly peaceful now that all signs of anything potentially going wrong had subsided. Those who had left during the last spot of trouble had now returned with news of the light finally being properly restored to all worlds, and life went on as normal.

Several years into the future was when it looked as though things may not have been as stable as those who returned seemed to have made it sound.

It was this time that the Radiant Gardens returned to its state of turmoil. Hollow Bastion was reborn.

--

In the castle now re-belonging to the queen of all darkness, a couple choice antagonists were sitting and planning the next round of destruction. However, just because they were planning didn't mean they were getting far with it.

Some wanted simple destruction. Some didn't even seem to care about the main objective they had decided on. Most of them weren't happy that someone else was sitting in that room with them.

--

_"Do not misunderstand me. I shall have my revenge on you yet."_

--

The person who had decided to sit herself on the main throne in the room they had decided to use as the entrance hall was least happy with the fact that the person who put all this together had brought the heart of the creator of modern heartless back here. He didn't seem happy with that choice either, but there wasn't much he could do.

He himself could see why each person sitting in the room was chosen for this task. Each of them had specialized experience in dealing with their enemy. It was logical, but the person who put all this together clearly wasn't thinking about the little details.

--

_"So, you have come this far and still you understand nothing."_

--

The person who had put all this together snapped out of her little trance upon realizing that he was addressing her with his words. They meant nothing to her, she knew she understood the effects of her decisions. She also understood that she was going to have a hard time trying to lead the other three in any way now that this was put together. It was just easier to sit back and let them argue.

She was pretty sure it simply bothered them all that she was the only one who put any research into how it was going to work if they got defeated. Her research was detailed and thorough, and it angered the rest of them.

She couldn't help but find herself laughing lightly at her thoughts, and how the other three were reacting to all this.

--

_"I wish you knew what I know."_

--

She switched her standing position leaning against the wall to a sitting position against the wall, still laughing lightly. The fourth person was less pleased now that she was showing signs of being alive. He wanted to be like that right now, but he had been so obsessed with the thought of succeeding that the thought of failing never crossed his mind.

Now he was stuck here. There was no doubt that this was his last chance here.

--

_"I will not allow it to end this way -- not yet."_

--

The person who had put this all together found herself on her feet once again upon hearing the fourth person speak. This was exciting, more so than the last time.

--

On the islands, things were peaceful. Things looked amazing, but there was one person who knew otherwise.

Standing looking out at the sunset, he couldn't remember what was wrong, but he knew that there was something big going on. Sitting next to him, his friend was too carefree to even notice any behavioral differences with his friend.

--

_"I think it will happen again..."_

--

_"What will happen?"_

--

_"Everything that's already happened..."_

--

((So yes, that is the official end to this fanfic. Now who wants random facts?

Fact 1: The Reorganization has 13 members. Sorta.  
Elexi and Skylexia were originally created for use in an Organization 13 RP, which ended up replacing most of the Organization members with OCs. Kisatrix wasn't a apart of this, but we had no more OCs from that RP and we needed a third member.

Fact 2: Skyla's Weapon is a laser pointer  
When Skyla was originally created, I used a laser pointer that shot normal red lasers and then damaging blue lasers. I switched it to a machine gun after I left the original RP because machine guns are neat.

Fact 3: Skyla does know something Riku and Sora don't.  
And it relates to Kairi, that's all I'm saying.

Fact 4: Elexi's inconsistency.  
Hum. Yea. I'm not so sure that Elexi is as weirdly moody as I made him seem. He's kinda childish, but knows responsibility. He's not my OC so it was really hard to write for him, and my friend (who Elexi belongs to) pointed out that the whole vines shooting out of the eyes thing was not only done wrong (sorry Marlo) but was OOC (sorry again Marlo). Normally I'd go back and fix it, but I'm too lazy and then other facts would have to be rewritten..

Fact 5: Damayon's group hates Skyla.  
Damayon and Ray were created as antagonists in an original story I used Skylexia/Skyla in. Ray died in it, but I never finished the story. Damayon's hair is white in that story, and was actually modeled somewhat after Ansem. Mirra's character is also from this story, where her name was Taylira and she actually acted a lot more like Elexi before I stuck her in here.

I hope you'll stick around, as I have a spin-off fic planned. Its official title is "Kingdom Hearts: Memories of the Past, Visions of the Future" although, I tend to just call it Visions. Teehee. Hope you enjoyed this fic.))


End file.
